


Illuminary Inc

by dragonbabezee



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Human, F/M, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Science Fiction, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-18 03:13:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 149,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16987059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonbabezee/pseuds/dragonbabezee
Summary: 2144AD.  Bulma is trying to put her life back together after serving a prison sentence, but her past is about to catch up with her.  A power-wielding mutant stalks her - one of the Saiyans whose fate she once tried to alter.  As the government's forces prepare to invade the last of the independent territories in continental America, she must roll the dice once more.All human(ish) AU.  An entry for the 2018 Vegebulocracy Big Bang Challenge.Illustrations by Rutbisbe and Ksilvs can be found in the artists area for the challenge (I will update with a link once I know the URL).





	1. Ithaca - 2144

**Author's Note:**

> Beta read by StockPotInnKeeper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge shout out to StockPotInnKeeper who beta read this work, fixing my typos and sloppy grammar, ruthlessly culling all my non-American colloquialisms, euphemisms, and spelling, as well as being my proto-reader sounding board. It was a lot of work in a short amount of time.

Cover art by Big Bang Artist participant Rutbisbe!

<http://rutbisbe.tumblr.com/post/181194014661/my-submissions-for-the-vegebul-big-bang-organized>

 

**CHAPTER ONE: ITHACA 2144**

 

_"Tell us all about your association."_

_"You mean, how did I meet him?"_

_"That and everything after.  Start at the beginning, Miss Briefs.  Leave nothing out."_

_I grinned.  There was nothing I wanted to do more than talk all about him._

...

I pressed espresso grind into the steel baskets and slotted them into the machine on autopilot, absorbed in keeping my chain of thought clear and precise.

"An average human body produces about one hundred watts of energy.  Enough to power an economic wall panel TV with gaming rig, if it wasn’t needed to power the human being that produced it.  A top athlete can produce four hundred watts during exercise, and over one thousand watts in short bursts. Some of that energy leaves the system - the body - as heat and movement, and we’re all familiar with reclamation clothing that reconverts a small portion of that excess back into electric potential."

I blinked rapidly to record the thought, and realized I might have overstretched the milk I was steaming.   

"But roughly twenty percent of our energy is used in the form of electric charge or electrochemical exchanges - in other words, in our nervous system and brain.  That energy could be used to power devices directly, but I’m sure you can all see a problem with that. For a normal human, that is.

"Now, would anyone like to guess how much energy the average carrier of the so-called Saiyan genetic mutation puts out at rest?"

More blinking, and then I forced myself to pay attention to what I was doing - I had absentmindedly created bad latte art in the shape of a neuron.  Technically I was trying to do two jobs at once, which only _sometimes_ worked out, but I was willing to cut whatever corners I had to make my life work.  I was an adult Master’s student trying to support myself while I studied, so if that meant prepping classes whilst slinging cappuccinos, so be it.  I had a date with Tien tonight and precious little time to prepare for the first year bioelectrical class I was teaching tomorrow. I pondered putting the date off again, but that seemed unfair.  I had already postponed twice, which was why we were having dinner on a Tuesday - the least sexy night of the week.

"Is that meant to be a star?" Maron asked over my shoulder, startling me.  I slopped a blob of over-stretched foam in the middle of my creation. "It’s probably better to just stick to the basics for now," she suggested, and twirled away holding a plate with a slice of cake in each hand.

I grit my teeth.  Maron was ten years younger than I, and my “superior” at the Cuba Cafe, something she took every opportunity to remind me of, despite the fact that I’d worked my first barista job while she was still in grade school.  I suspect she felt I posed a threat to her ascension to duty manager by merit of experience and actual managerial qualities. Well, tough. I didn’t particularly want the role of duty manager, but I’d fight her for it if it came with a raise.

These days everything was a never ending balancing act between my studies, my survival, and my dignity.  I’d had other jobs that paid more - generally on-call support, but honestly, I got more respect as a barista, and respect was something I craved.  To have self-respect was an ongoing struggle in my life. There was still a gloating fourteen year old inside of me, crowing over her cleverness at gaining university entrance, and she was appalled with how my life had turned out.

Realising that my thoughts were edging towards the endless source of self-pity called my past, I plastered on my best customer-service smile and asked the next in line for their orders.  Two school girls in private-school uniforms ordered hot chocolates. Behind them was another pair - a boy and girl in the same uniform, glued together at the wrist. Then the door opened and even more kids piled in.

Maron came to take the coffees I'd just made.

"Where are all these kids coming from?" I asked her.

She tossed her teal hair over her shoulder and looked at me as if I was as stupid as she was.  No, no, that's not fair. Maron possessed a subtle intelligence and a special talent for making people feel small.  In the two weeks I'd been working at the café, we'd been mistaken for sisters several times. I hoped it was only our matching blue eyes, blue hair color, and killer racks that did it, but  Becca, who hired me, said we were similar of attitude as well as features. I sure hope she was wrong.

"The Blackmore Academy next door," Maron stated.  "You must have seen the sign, surely?."

My heart plummeted to the soles of my tatty snow boots.

“That’s a high school?” I asked redundantly.  “I thought that was a some sort of college.”

“It’s a prep school.”

I felt suddenly sick.  Maron whisked the coffees away while I bumbled through making the hot chocolates.  Another wave of teenagers flooded through the door, wrapped in scarves and woolen hats.

"How come I haven’t seen any of them before?" I asked Maron when she returned for the hot chocolates.

"They’ve been on Spring-break, just like we have, of course," Maron said.  "These rich kids make up most customers during the semester. so you better get used to it."

I finished out my shift offering cake, drinks and weird, strained smiles to the fresh-faced (and pimple-faced) teens that eventually filled every table in the joint.  It’s not like I’m _scared_ of teens.  Even if a police officer happened to walk in for a coffee, I had no need to be worried.  But when my parole officer found out I was working next door to a high school…

"Damn it, damn it, damn it," I muttered as I waited for Becca to turn up to begin prep for the dinner shift.

...

"I’m sorry to have to do this to you, but I can’t work here any longer."

Becca stared at me.  Her face had been serious when I’d asked for a word with her in the store room, but now it was shocked.  "Why not? Did something happen?"

"No, nothing happened."

"Then why, Bulma?  I thought you wanted this job!  I thought you needed this job!"

"I…"  But what could I really say?  I did need the job, but I couldn’t tell her why I was walking away.

“I hired you in the term break especially so that I could train you up while it was slow - not that you really needed it.  And now as soon as we get busy you want to leave! _Why?_ ”

I could see I’d let her down, and I felt awful.  The injustice of my situation threatened to rise up again, bringing tears to my eyes.  Six years ago I would have been so raw and angry I would have just told her to kiss my ass and walked out, but now I was actually trying to reassemble my life, I couldn’t afford that.  If not this job, I still needed _some_ kind of job to get me by while I was studying, and there weren’t so many coffee shops this side of town.  I wasn’t even sure if I had enough money to make rent next week without my two next shifts. Was there a cafe owner’s network?  Would I get blacklisted?

"I can’t tell you," I said.

Becca waited for more, but she didn’t get it.  "You can’t leave!"

"I have to."

"Bulma!  You’ve really screwed us, you know!"

"I know, and I’m sorry.  I can see if there’s someone at the university that needs a job I can send your way."

She rolled her eyes.  I knew that finding a part-timer in this college town wasn’t an issue.  Finding someone reliable was a bigger one. I knew Becca had thought that I was that reliable one, being older and far more appreciative of the job than most.  She was probably feeling like I’d hoodwinked her.

"I could come in on Wednesday and Thursday," I offered.  My next meeting with my parole officer was on Friday. Still, if she found out I knew about the school next door and I didn’t do something to immediately rectify the situation…

"Don’t bother," said Becca.  "I’ll call the next one on the list.  May as well get them trained as soon as possible."

I nodded, glad.

"Sorry again."

As I left via the kitchen she caught up with me, grasping me by the elbow and ushering me out the back door.

"Bulma," she asked with more gentleness, as she pulled the door shut on the curious looks from the kitchen staff.  "What’s going on? Are you in trouble?"

"No."

"Then why the mystery?  Tell me what’s going on!  Maybe I could help."

Oh god, the concern was the worst part.  Her mothering tone made me feel younger and more timid than I knew I was.  She was only ten years older than my thirty-one. I gave her a smile, a bit undermined by my still-unshed tears.

"It’s nothing that you need to worry about," I told her.

"Well, I’m worrying."

"Don’t."

"Can I help?"

I shook my head firmly.  "It’s nothing to do with the cafe.  And I know I let you down. But I do still need a job, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t put me on the cafe-owners blacklist for terrible employees.  Please."

I attempted a smile.  This just puzzled her more.  Yet again I was tempted to tell the truth, but the fear that the repercussions from that would be worse than being labelled an unreliable worker kept my mouth shut.  Over the eight years since my release I had experimented a few times, telling strangers at train stations and airports my story, but there’s something about the words “registered sex offender” that overshadowed “falsely convicted”.  The absolute truth was that my conviction still stood, and I had a snowball’s chance in hell of ever changing that now.

"I don’t understand-"

"I know," I cut her off.  A mystery was all she was ever getting from me.  "Sorry again, and bye!"

I walked on, out the alley and into the streets of downtown Ithaca, feeling the weight of Becca’s baffled gaze on me.  I couldn’t stop the tears of self-pity then. _Registered sex offender_ \- the words would follow me for the rest of my life, and I still had twelve years of parole and the court order preventing me from approaching within a hundred yards of a middle or high school.

I took my usual route home, gloved hands rammed in my pockets against the chill.  I’d lived in Ithaca a year and a half, and I still couldn’t get used to how much of the time I spent being cold.  Before coming here I’d spent four years working (or hiding out, as my parents correctly and bluntly pointed out) in Mexico, an one in San Francisco, which wasn’t too bad.  Before that I’d spent most of my years in Southern California. The winters in Nevada before my father settled us in California were now a distant memory, and I don’t remember them being as long as they were in New York State.  Even spring break was brutal.

Last year had had the coldest March in Ithaca in a hundred and forty years.  I wondered if a new record was currently being set. The Two Day War ninety years ago had solved a number of problems in the most tragic ways possible.  Overpopulation? Unsustainable economies? Rising global temperatures? Dysfunctional democracy? My great-grandparents’ generation discovered that nuclear war will sort these out in a way that will make everyone wonder what they were complaining about.  Now climatologists warned that the Earth was entering an ice age of yet-to-be determined length and severity. Yay.

I cut across the front yard of the neighbor’s house, crunching through the patchy snow that had begun to melt before freezing solid again, heading for the entranceway of my building.  As I reached for my keys, movement caught my eye; a man was standing on the neighbors’ porch. He swiftly turned his face away from me, then stepped down off the porch, striding away. Frowning, I watched him go.  I knew the neighbors were out of town. I hadn’t heard the guy knocking. I wondered if I had just spooked a burglar scoping the house.

As he marched around the corner, it occurred to me that there was something familiar about him.  It was just a man, well built, in a dark gray, bulky jacket, black leather boots, and a hat with ear flaps, seen from behind - what was to recognize?  I had barely seen a flash of skin, and in this gloomy light I couldn’t have even described his complexion.

As he rounded the corner he threw a glance back over his shoulder back at me, and I froze on the spot.  Dark brows, dark eyes, but too far away to make out anything more than that.

He didn’t hesitate, but disappeared down the main street, and shaking myself to action, I rushed up the steps and unlocked the front door.  Between the front door and the hall door was a closed porch, with boot racks and a wobbly hat and umbrella stand that the residents could use and not tramp mud or water through the hallways.  As I shucked my snow boots I realized that that was what was familiar. Those black boots, and that walk was somehow...military. And I’d spent enough time on the periphery of military bases to recognize it.

_An ex-soldier burglar?_ I wondered, and hurried up the worn carpet of the stairs to my door.

My tiny apartment was in Collegetown, in a grand old house built in the 1920s, making it around two hundred and twenty years old, but had been butchered to become student accommodation at some point.  Some of the windows didn’t open, and the whole thing creaked a lot, especially in the wind, but my second floor, one bedroom apartment was my haven. It would have been cheaper to live with roommates elsewhere, but privacy was non-negotiable for me.  As soon as I got to my room I logged onto my butler by voice command.

"Watson, wake up!"

"Welcome home, Miss Pincher," replied the even, alto voice from the small speaker on my kitchen bench.  There was one in each room, linked to a microphone and a small display, except in my bedroom where it was linked to my wall panel TV.  My butler was no flash, integrated system, but an ad hoc set up. The apartment was low-fi, and my appliances mostly dumb rather than smart.  The lights and heating were connected, and the oven and fridge and TV, but that was about it. I was perhaps a fickle mistress of software servants - every couple of months I would try a new flavor for my butler - Jeeves, Smith, Gladys, Jemma, Alexis, Donald…  Now it was Watson’s turn with his soft, precise, English accent and manners based on an imaginary Victorian butler’s.

"Watson, can you put in a job ticket to the police?" I asked as I strode into the bedroom and began picking out clothes for my date.

"Of course, Miss.  I’m filling the form out for you now.  What urgency would you like to assign the ticket?  Urgent, time-critical or time non-critical?"

"Time critical."

"Is this a life or death situation?"

"No.  It’s just suspicious behavior."

Watson paused while his fuzzy AI worked out how to translate that into the ticket form he was filling out for me.  "And what would you like to put in the ticket?"

"A man with a dark grey winter coat, mid thigh, black pants, maybe jeans?  Black military-style boots seen loitering on the porch of number 345 while they are away on holiday.  Tanned or medium complexion."

I pulled out a form-fitting, red, wool dress.  I had worn it for quite a few of our dates already, but it was a good choice for a cold night, so Tien would just have to deal if he felt it was a fashion no-no, not that he was the kind of guy to notice or comment on clothing.  I didn’t have enough money for an extensive or non-functional wardrobe. He owned his own dojo, so he was richer than I, but he was hardly rolling in cash.

"Is that all?" Watson asked.

"Yup.  Send it."

"It is done, Miss."

I stripped down and walked into the bathroom for a quick shower before the date.  At least the cold couldn’t get me in here. Electricity - all that unethical Illuminary lifeblood - was cheap enough that heating my apartment properly wouldn’t even break _my_ piggy bank.  Maybe now that I’d had to leave the cafe I’d need to start suffering a bit more, but even so, I’d only be saving a handful of dollars a week.  Every time the power bill arrived I felt guilt - yet at the same time there was nothing more I could do that I wasn’t already doing, and unless I wanted to camp in the forests like a wild woman, achieving exactly nothing, I didn’t know how to live without accessing that electricity.

My wristband buzzed just as I took it off.  Glancing down I saw a message from Tien scrolling across the white silicon back of it.

"We still on for 7?"

I squeezed the wristband and spoke, "Yep."  It sent it as a quick reply. As soon as I did so I regretted it.  I should have asked him for a rain check. I didn’t have the money for a date now, and I still should be working on the class for tomorrow.  I cringed.

I squeezed the wristband again.  "Contact Tien. Voice call."

As soon as he answered I began speaking.

"Actually, Tien, can I bail?  I...kinda lost my job today." Oh, dear, I hadn’t thought this through very well.

"Really?" he asked.  "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I’m fine.  I just don’t have the cash to splash on dinner, you know."  I could feel myself blushing with shame. My father had raised me with the belief that with hard work there was no need for anyone of sound intellect to be poor.  I knew now that that wasn’t true, but emotionally I still seemed to believe it. Perhaps because so many well-to-do and rich people subscribed to that idea. Speaking of parental non-wisdoms, my mother had raised me to believe that with a pretty face, charm, and the right introductions, I wouldn’t need to work a day in my life, but that also hadn’t panned out for me.  Maybe the kind of introductions you get in a women’s prison aren't the right ones?

There was a long pause on the other end.

"Is that okay?" I asked.

"Bulma, I really want to see you."

"Oh,  Okay."  That sounded good.

"Don’t worry about paying for dinner.  I’ll pay for it, and the car too."

I smiled, though he couldn’t see it.  "Are you sure?"

"It’s the least I can do."

"All right, then.  Thanks! I’ll have to buy you dinner when I’ve got another job."

"Don’t worry about it, Bulma.  See you later."

I got into the shower, still smiling.  A free dinner! I always went dutch on dates, as a rule.  I didn't like feeling obligated because a guy, who may be no more than a stranger to me, had laid down a bit of money on a date.  It was so anachronistic. Some men were all for sharing the costs, but others tried to insist, and it was usually those very same men who felt like they'd bought something from me when they paid for my dinner.  If I did put out in any way I wanted it to be because I wanted to. Sometimes I wondered if this was to blame for my hopeless record with relationships, and other times I knew the truth. Sometimes I gave up dating for months at a time, in despair of finding a man who would make me want to trust him, who could actually seem like more than just a friendly acquaintance who perchance wanted to bang me.

But I’d been dating Tien for three months now - possibly the longest stretch I had managed with anyone.  Maybe at three months it was acceptable to let him pay, especially as he had more money anyway? I was still unsure if I could call him my boyfriend or not.  Truth be told, I was still unsure how much I liked him. He liked me, and I liked that he liked me, and and he was tall and pretty good looking, even if he was prematurely bald.  His body was magnificent though - I couldn’t fault him that. And he seemed noble, kind and pretty knowledgeable for someone who claimed to not be an intellectual, and we had had some excellent far-ranging philosophical discussions.  And he was serious. Maybe a little too serious.

I still had half my mind on that as I hurriedly put some images together to use as slides for tomorrow, making more mental notes as I went.  That sort of thing always took more time than I expected, and before I knew it Tien was messaging, "Outside".

"Coming," I replied, leaping up and shoving my knee high boots on.  They weren’t as warm or as sensible for walking on icy pavement as my snow boots, but they had a faux-fur lining at least.  Then I rammed on my coat, gloves, scarf, and hat, grabbed my purse, and rushed downstairs.

Tien was waiting in a two-person car and opened the door as I walked as quickly as I deemed safe down the path.  As soon as the door shut behind me the automatic chauffeur spoke.

"Awaiting directions."

"To the Zamboni Trattoria, please," Tien replied.  The car rolled to a smooth start and I turned towards him, smiling with real gladness.  A good meal and good conversation were going to go a long way to cheering me up. His replying smile was a ghost of what I'd given him.  In fact, he looked more serious than usual, pressed into the corner of the seat.

"Are you okay?"

He shifted uncomfortably.  "Me? Yes. What about you?"

"I’m fine."

"You’re not too cut up about losing your job?"

"Well…"  I didn't want him to worry.  I also wanted for him to not ask a lot of questions about it.  I realized that I hadn't prepared a good cover story for that. "To tell you the truth, it was more of a quitting than a firing, but…"

He sat straighter, looking interested.  "What happened?"

I waved a hand in dismissal.  "Nothing exciting."

"What boring thing made you quit your job, then?  You said you liked it there."

"I did."

"So, then?"

"Can we not talk about it right now?" I asked.  Later I might be able to think of a good lie to tell.  "I wanna have a nice time tonight and not obsess immediately over the shitty stuff."

His face fell and he leaned away from me again.  "Yeah, sure."

But we didn’t talk again until we got to the restaurant.  

...

"I feel like I still barely know you," he was saying, twirling his wine glass nervously while I stared in increasing distress at the remains of my risotto con anatra.  This dinner was an ambush.

"We’ve only been on...twenty dates."  Yes, I had been counting. "How well can we expect to know each other?"

"Better than this, by now," he replied. "I feel like you won’t share enough of yourself with me for me to get to know you."

"That’s not true!  I’ve told you lots about myself!"

"I guess I know a bit about where you grew up and that you did your undergraduate degree at UC, that you used to work at the cinema and before that, tech support.  But that’s all. I feel like you’re keeping me on the edge of your life. You’ve never asked me up to your apartment and you’ve never introduced me to a single friend of yours, no one from your past before Ithaca."

This last part hurt for reasons Tien didn’t know about.  My circle of friends was practically non-existent. "I didn’t realize there was a schedule to keep to.  I’m a private person."

"I get that.  I’m a private person, too.  But I’m looking for someone to share my life with.  I don’t get the impression that you are."

I dragged my gaze back to his.  "Well...sorry I didn’t give off the right signals or something.  Of course that’s what I’m looking for."

"Then you’re going to have to let me get close to you.’  He grimaced. I knew he wasn’t the kind of guy who liked talking about his feelings, but he obviously felt this was important.  

"We got very close last Saturday," I pointed out.  "And the week before that." That had been out of my comfort zone - I had stayed over at his apartment without the aid of alcohol or the expectation that I would never see him again to lower my inhibitions.  It had been actual relationshipping - a huge step forward for me. But Tien apparently didn’t see it that way.

"Ha ha, Bulma.  You know I’m not talking about sex."

"Then what are you talking about?  I’m still...deciding if I can trust you, waiting to see if you _are_ a person I want close to me."

Now I could see that I had hurt _him_.  "Well, that is kind of the thing that’s been getting at me."

"What?"

"You make it quite clear sometimes that you don’t trust me.  And I can’t handle that. I want my girlfriend to be able to tell me anything, but you won’t."

Oh, so I _was_ his girlfriend.  My mouth stayed closed though.  I felt a strong urge to open it and say something like, "What do you want to know?" but I controlled it.  The pause while he waited for me to say anything became uncomfortably long.

"Bulma," he said in the end.  "I get that you have a past, and I know something bad must have happened, because you never talk about it, but if you think we have a future together you’ve got to tell me.  You’ve got to give me _something_.  Like before, when you wouldn’t tell me what happened to you at work.  Can’t you even tell me about that?"

"I just quit," I said, still no story prepared.  "I hated the other girl I shared a shift with and I lost my shit and quit!  End of story."

He looked at me carefully.  "Okay. I’m not sure I believe you, but okay."

"You ask me a for an answer, and then don’t believe it?  Why did I bother?"

He sighed and hung his head for a moment,  "Sorry. Anyway, it’s not really about today.  I know there are things about you that you’re holding back.  Sometimes I think it might just be that you’re so smart, like you can’t talk to me because I don’t have a PhD in molecular biology and that’s what’s going on in your head all the time."

"Tien, even _I_ don’t have a PhD in molecular biology."  I did have one in developmental psychology, but that was one of the things I didn’t like to discuss.

"Yeah, well I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.  And you know what I mean."

We lapsed into tense silence again.

"So is this it?" I asked.  "Are you done with me?"

"I don’t want it to be," he replied.  His eyes were so sad I almost felt sympathy towards him until I remembered that I was the one on the verge of being dumped.  "If you want to be with me...tell me what’s going on. Tell me what you’re thinking. What is it in your past that you don’t like?"

My heart began to pound harder at the idea.  Could I? I couldn’t tell him all, but maybe I could tell him some?  I imagined the words coming from my mouth. Tien was understanding enough - maybe he could get past the part about prison and the conviction and really believe me when I said it was all a horrible mistake - a lie, a revenge upon me to silence me.  He was right - I was silent. I had been silenced and broken.

My mouth opened slowly, and the first word dragged itself in a croak from my lips.  "I-"

But he chuckled humorlessly at the same moment, shaking his head.  "Of course, if you don’t want to be with me, no need to say anything.  Sometimes I’ve been left wondering if you _do_ actually like me, or if you’re just going through the motions."

My cheeks caught flame with guilt.  He was staring right at me, and I could see he realized what it meant.  There was no point in denying that I wondered the same thing. He pressed his lips together and looked away, eyes flashing in anger or hurt.  He was right again. And what was the point of laying it all on the line for someone I didn’t believe I really had a future with?

"I do like you.  You’re a great guy, Tien," I said, and my voice was thick with something that was going to be tears real quick.  I stood up. "I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to waste your time. I just… I guess the problem is with me." He started to stand up, too. "Don’t worry, I’ll pay for my own dinner," I told him, snatching my purse from the table.

"I said I would," he replied in a voice that was nearly a whisper.

I hurried to the bar, but he was right behind me, waving his wristband and insisting that the server take his money not mine.  I stood by, defeated, while the waitress got my coat. I wanted the floor to swallow me up before the water brimming in my eyes spilled down my cheeks.

"Shall I call us a car?" he said, his face all twisted up like I felt.  If he cried, I wouldn't be able to stop myself either.

I shrugged on my coat.  "No, don’t worry, I’ll make my own way home."

Before he could object I hurried out the door, still buttoning my coat, and began striding down the street past the other restaurants and bars where normal people were having dates, where they laughed and told each other about their families and youthful peccadilloes.  The cold slammed me in the chest and held the tears at bay for a while. Damn it, there _was_ something wrong with me!  How could I mistake Tien being a nice and patient guy for me actually falling for him?  He didn’t deserve this strange demi-adult using him to work out her shit when he wanted a real future with a woman who had a real past.

I cried half-heartedly for a few minutes, but gave it up.  This wasn’t tearing, piercing pain I felt in my heart, but dull, aching deadness.  I needed to get home, finish the notes for the class, then get to bed. I didn’t call a car, though.  I was very glad Tien paid for dinner. I really did have no cash to spare, so even though it was icy out, I walked home.

On the edge of the downtown lights, where there was more retail and less nightlife, I hurried to catch the walk sign at an intersection, then stopped myself by catching the pole, thinking better of making a dash across the slippery road in these boots.  My momentum swung me about a bit, and I did slip a little. I looked back to see if anyone had seen my clumsiness and my heart leapt into my throat. A man in a dark gray, bulky coat, military boots and a hat with ear flaps walked towards me, his face illuminated by the light flooding out of a chinese takeaway before he stepped into shadow again.

_That couldn’t be the same guy_ , I tried to tell myself, but my body didn’t agree, and flooded my system with adrenaline.  I looked either way, but the traffic was steady, and anyway, across the intersection the road became even less busy and passed under a flyover, and I was still a good half mile from my house.

I walked to the left.  This street wasn’t busy either, but there was an Irish bar on this block.  I kept my eyes on its glowing shamrock as I walked as fast as I could, telling myself that this was probably a huge overreaction.  When I reached the door and put my hand on ye olde brass door handle, I let myself look back.

He was there, coming towards me; a silhouette in the light of the intersection.

_Bardock!_

My gut clenched with fear and excitement, but I gripped the door handle harder to stop myself running towards him rather than away.   _It’s not Bardock,_ I told myself, though something of the circumstances reminded me a great deal about my first encounter with him, eleven years ago.  Even in silhouette I could see he was too short to be Bardock.

Inside the warmth of the pub I pulled away from the door and squeezed between barstools and patrons, to a gap in the velvet curtains facing the street, trying to keep an eye on the door at the same time.  Moments passed and I began to feel a fool. The man that I had pushed behind was giving me a second and a third look, and I could see he was winding himself up to ask if I was okay.

The man in the dark coat strode past the slit of the curtain, and, for a fraction of a second, I saw his lower face in profile.  He had a sharp nose and a fine shaped jaw, and again recognition struck me, though I could not see a reason for it. The black leather cap with its grey fur lining concealed the rest of his face.  I flinched back from the window, but the man kept moving, oblivious.

"Hey, Missy, are you good?" the beer sodden man finally asked.  He and his friends were so far gone I was impressed that he even recognized my state of fear.

"Yeah, I’m okay."

Then he smiled hopefully.  "Let me buy you a drink!"

"No, I’m good, thanks."

I squeezed uncomfortably past him again, heading for the open space before the bar.  The man was almost certainly _not_ following me, I reasoned, talking myself back down to Earth.  That style of hat and coat were incredibly common after all. It was extremely unlikely to be the same person from the neighbours’ porch, and any non-paranoid person would see that.

"What’ll it be, love?" the middle aged bar woman asked.

Caught by surprise I stood there with my mouth open for a good couple of seconds.  Stalker or not, I was a bit shaken, and the wise thing to do would be to call a car to drive me the rest of the way home.  Or, for a similar price, I could buy a drink to settle my nerves and while the time until the non-stalker was well out of the vicinity.

"Whiskey, please.  A double."

...

I found an empty table in the corner near the bathrooms, where I could watch the one-man-band playing on the tiny stage and contemplate the wreck of my love life.  For not the first time I wondered if my early academic precociousness had come at the cost of normal emotional development. Bah, who was a kidding? I’d studied developmental psychology and I knew my childhood isolation had had a profound effect.  I was a fuck up, that was for sure. Unable to relate to people my own age as a child and teenager, but still unable to relate to adults properly, I was homeschooled and struggled to make friends, let alone make boyfriends. Then went on to university, where my chances of romantic success were miniscule as my classmates considered me annoying, arrogant jailbait.  I was doggedly focused on my studies though, and I had believed my mother when she said I had plenty of time to catch up. And then…

I got out of jail aged twenty three, angry as hell and still a virgin.  I still felt like an alien around people my own age, but I had found that, for the price of a hangover, I could get into a state where I didn’t give a crap, and finally blend in somewhere, even if it was with the bar-rats and lads looking for a lay.  Fooling around with drunken strangers eventually culminated in my finally losing my virginity to a young man I met when we were stuck in an airport hotel during a hurricane. I wasn’t even that drunk, but I knew we’d both be leaving in a day or two, and he lived in Canada - there was no chance of a relationship.  It had been perfect. Well, not the sex, but the situation, for me at least. He seemed like a sweet guy, and I like to think he really liked me, and I was able to seem normal long enough for one thing to lead to another, to lead to my hotel room. I still remember his look of shock when I told him afterwards that it had been my first time.  That weekend of natural disaster and confinement was a fond memory for me. I took a photo of the two of us in the bar together and I still got it out now and then to remind myself that there can be sweet things out there for me. But I had never gotten the hang of relationships that lasted longer than a dirty weekend.

I caught myself looking around the bar speculatively and was disgusted with myself.  The whiskey had gone straight to me, apparently, enough that I was sizing up the guy who’d offered me the drink, and his friends who were bellowing with laughter.  I groaned at my own foolishness. I had only just been dumped by Tien, I didn’t do one night stands any more, and I had a lecture to finish.

I got my display out of my purse and unrolled it on the table, thinking to maybe continue my work, but whether it was the atmosphere or my mood, I couldn’t concentrate.  The neural scanner under my hat wasn’t working that well. Alcohol always interfered with the clarity of the expressed thoughts, and I already wasn’t thinking too clearly to start with after the evening I’d had.  Instead I began manually checking social media and the messaging accounts that I had using the touchscreen on the display. There was not much. My much older sister, Tights Briefs, the investigative journalist extraordinaire, was posting titbits from her coming story on the government’s activities in Bolivia, but it was obviously aimed at her millions of followers rather than her family.  I sent her a quick note, letting her know I had seen them and asking how she was. I didn’t tell her I was worried for her - like my parents, I always was. Tights was invincible, though. She was still half legend in my mind - I had always been so in awe of her growing up. I’d been only two when she, too, had gone to university early, aged sixteen. Since then, I would only see her at holidays, and maybe not even then, always so well dressed and grown-up, always with the best stories, charming boyfriends, bearing accolades, awards, and buzz.

I felt guilty for my part in her downfall.  If I hadn’t told her my story, if she hadn’t tried to tell the world the truth about Illuminary Inc, she wouldn’t have been dragged in the mud like she was.  No publication would touch her now. She claimed she didn’t care - that she would rather be reporting the truth and labelled a nutjob than reporting lies and given awards.  She just sold her stories directly to her readers and self-funded her research.

"They won’t mess with me, Bulma," she had assured me.  "Not when so many people are watching me, waiting for it to happen.  They’ll just keep calling me a conspiracy whackjob and I’ll keep posting the real stories."

So far she’d been right, and the only blow back she’d had to contend with was the poo-pooing of her work as crackpot conspiracy theory and tabloid fiction by every officially sanctioned media creator.

Out of habit I checked all of my email addresses, the first, my university address; a few questions from anxious or over-eager undergraduates addressing me as Miss Pincher; a couple from professors talking about the lab work I'd been doing; and news about network maintenance - nothing that couldn't be addressed tomorrow. My personal email was chock full of promotions, newsletters and predictably little actually personal mail.  

Finally, wondering if it was duty or a sad compulsion that made me, I checked the anonymous email address that I shared with no one.  I hadn't received a message on it for over a decade, but I still checked it regularly, hoping, or dreading, I wasn't sure which. Maybe I was hoping for proof of my experiences - something to show I wasn't just a delusional, lonely, predatory female living on the fringe of society for no sane reason.  Because that's what I sometimes felt like.

I opened it, expecting to feel that pang of disappointment.

_Subject: Urgent_.

My heart thumped hard in shock. One message sitting there in my inbox.  I made sure no-one was watching over my shoulder and opened it.

_To all our friends and allies,_

_Our communications have been infiltrated and our whereabouts discovered.  We're on the move. Close this account - we will be closing this on our end.  Check your exposure. Stay safe. As long as you don't need to go into hiding, we will find you if we need to._

_RS._

I stood up from the table in panic, then calmed myself and sat back down.  No one was coming for me in the bar, and likely no one was coming for me at all.  This was a message sent wholesale “to all friends and allies”. They probably didn't even remember I was in the address book.  I could hardly be said to be in contact with the family, and as far as I knew, no one had any reason to think I still did. This was the first I'd heard from the Saiyans since my arrest.  So I wasn't delusional, but I was now worried. What had happened? Were they all right? I couldn't reply to find out, not if the account was already closed, or worse, someone from Illuminary Inc was watching it.

I read it again.  So brutally brief and stark.  R.S. was no doubt Radishya Saiya - brutal and stark was her style.  She certainly wouldn't care for a useless message of concern from a ghost of the past like me.

Shaking a little, I went to my settings to delete my account and spent a minute hovering over the confirm button.  It was, after all, the only link to the Saiya family I had. They'd never entrusted me with their location, which was for the best, because if I'd known, Illuminary Inc would soon have known too, so this would be the end of any tenuous association with them.  Like they said, I was still living in the open, if discreetly. They could track me down again if they needed to, though I doubted they would.

I pressed the confirm button and a goodbye message popped up from the server.  I felt like I'd just closed the door on the only part of my adult history I felt good about.

My heart was sinking, and still sinking, falling out of sight, and I recognized the feeling.  I thought I had left it behind in Mexico, when I devised my plan, my comeback. After four years of burying myself in a resort town, trying to forget my old life and pretend I was just a barista, or a waitress, or hotel receptionist who liked to prop up the local bars more nights of the week than not, I had been shamed by a tourist from Oregon into considering the waste I was making of my life.  Not that he’d been cruel. He’d been a fun few days, but he told me the day he left that he couldn’t understand why someone like me was working as a receptionist.

"And what am I like?" I asked.

"Clever," he’d said.  "Super, razor-sharp clever.  Did you ever think about going to university?"

"I did.  It didn’t work out."

"Why not?"

“I can’t work in that field anymore."  There was no real career path for a developmental psychologist barred from contact with children.

"Oh, really?  I _knew_ you were smart.  Well, then, why don’t you retrain?  If you legitimately can’t work in your chosen field, and you can make a good enough entrance grade in something else, the government will pay for you to go back and study something else."

I had kind of known that, but not seriously considered it as something possible.  After all, would the government consider retraining a convicted criminal? "Maybe."

"You should.  It’d be a shame to waste that brain of yours answering phones."

He had smiled, thinking he was paying me a compliment, not the sucker punch of truth I felt it as.  I _had_ been wasting myself.  I was doing no one any good moping about the butt-end of nowhere behind a cocktail glass.  How selfish and self-indulgent of me to put my personal shame ahead of any use I might otherwise be?  I had descended into a further spiral of depression, railing at myself rather than Illuminary Inc for once.  I was almost fired from my job as receptionist due to my deadened demeanor and increasing lateness due to long nights thinking the same thoughts over and over instead of sleeping.  But somehow, in the midst of that fog of misery, I completed the application forms for retraining. I expected a rejection, but apparently the government didn’t want to waste me either, conviction or not.   Inside two weeks I had a reply inviting me to take the entrance grade exam for a BSc in Bioengineering in a month’s time. For the first time since going to prison I used my eLibrary card to download something other than romance and sci-fi novels, and I spent my take-home pay on textbooks rather than margaritas.  I had to fly back to California to take the exam in English. At first I thought I would study at a local university in Cancun, but realized my Spanish wasn’t good enough for that, and the commute would be too great. Instead I applied at the University of California. The instant I set foot on a campus I had felt a sense of calm and belonging I hadn’t had for a long time.  A university had molded and guided in me in my formative years, amd academia still felt like home. When I beheld the email informing me of my second acceptance to university I didn’t feel triumph or glee like I had the first time - but I did feel like I had a sense of purpose.

I moved to Berkley.  I still retained some of my gift for knowledge absorption, but studying was no longer a game to me, nor as easy as it once had been.  With cross-crediting it had still taken me two years to complete the degree, while I worked as both an IT support call center lackey and a barista, but I had graduated with honors.  And I did it all without admitting to my parents I was studying again. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it was for fear of failure. Or perhaps it was because the next step of my plan was a Masters and eventually a PhD in Molecular Biology and Bioengineering - perilously close to my father’s speciality.  When I told them I was moving to Ithaca though, my mother’s uncanny intuition kicked in.

"You’re going to Cornell," my mother guessed immediately.  "You’ve been living out in Berkley, near the university, and now you’re going to Cornell, aren’t you?"

I saw the hope break on both their faces and squirmed inside.  Maybe that’s what I’d been afraid of. But then I told them what I was studying my mother was concerned.

"Please tell me it’s not some revenge mission you’re pursuing!"

"Of course not!  I was always interested in this field."  And I had avoided it because it was my father’s domain, and picked psychology to study the first time round.  My father was even more censorious.

“I shouldn’t have to tell you to stay far away from anything to do with Illuminary Inc, or the Saiyans,” he’d said.

“No, you shouldn’t,” I’d agreed, keeping my voice as neutral as I could, even though his words burned me.  I had trusted my father once. And he had once trusted me. No more.

Now that my plan was coming closer to fruition though, I found my aims to be vague.  I wanted to study Saiyan biology, but even if I could gain access to Saiyan genetic material, how would that help those already living?  I wanted to find a way to remove the need for a live Saiyan to power Illuminary technology, but I still had no idea if that would be possible, and I was never, ever going to be granted access to a captive Saiyan ever again when Illuminary Inc controlled them all except Radishya and her family of fugitives.  If I wound up best in my field, what good would that do anyone? I had had a notion of contacting the Saiyans via this email address to ask to study them - convincing them to place their trust in me to study them and make them obsolete, but I wasn’t even sure if that’s what they wanted. And now I had lost my only tenuous link to them.  What was I going to do if this was the end of the line for my new life’s purpose?

I left the empty glass on the table and pulled on my coat again, braced myself, and stepped out into the night.

Backtracking to the intersection, I crossed the road and made for the overbridge.  Dark thoughts occupied me. I wondered why I couldn’t be simple and easily satisfied - my girl-cousins and their friends were mostly married with young children by now.  I had no envy of their diaper-strewn lives, but they claimed to be happy, if tired, and seemed to lack no purpose to their being. I couldn’t even keep a boyfriend. I thought of Tien’s face as he paid for dinner and became convinced he’d been holding back tears, and now my own came, freed by the whisky.  I was a terrible person, Was there any hope for me? I was going to die alone one day. I didn’t even have a cat.

After the underpass I followed the riverside footpath for a while.  A fleet of driverless cars were parked in the car lot to my left, screened from the road by blocks of apartment buildings, and I watched them check themselves in and out of their charging bays.  Cars had been driving themselves longer than I’d been alive, but I still found the automated dance interesting, like worker ants coming and going from the hive, not always acting in a completely similar manner, and sometimes having the odd stand off, but all getting where they needed to be, quickly and silently.  The different car brands had different flavours to their driving - literal personalities that built up over over the years of propriety machine-learning specific to that brand. No one knew why the cars had their quirks - as long as they stuck to the rules and delivered passengers safely no one questioned it any longer.

One was coasting along the inlet to the car park, circumventing the entire thing before joining the loop that brought it towards the exit, and past me.  It was large, black, and obviously meant to intimidate - a novelty model perhaps, for a certain kind of customer. The window rolled down, and at first I thought the automatic chauffeur was going to ask if I needed a ride, until I realized that there was _someone in the driver’s seat_.

I stopped dead, clutching the metal handrail of the walk from sheer surprise at the unexpected sight.  The car stopped, too.

"Would you like a lift?" the man asked.  I couldn’t see anything of him, but I could see shadows of others in the back of the car.

"No thanks," I said.

"Are you sure, Miss Briefs?" he replied.

At the sound of my surname - my _real_ surname - I ran.  There was no need for thought to catch up - there was no good reason a stranger should know to call me that.  The car sped up too, and seeing the futility of it, I ran only a short way before I grabbed the railing again, and hauled myself around to face back the way I’d come.  I crossed the road behind the car while the driver was still putting the car in reverse, and ran across the lot, winding between parked cars, slipping and catching myself on their hoods.  I heard feet pounding behind me and squealed in desperation - curse these boots! As I reached the grass bern dividing the two halves of the lot I heard the thwang of a gas-powered gun and felt a jab like a hot needle in my shoulder.  My world exploded into pain, every muscle going rigid as the tase dart unloaded 50000 volts into me. I fell forwards on my face, hitting the grass and near-frozen dirt. I didn’t feel very thankful for that hard dirt at that moment, but it was a lot better than hitting the asphalt would have been.

Voices sounded around me, and the second my muscles relaxed, I rolled over to see my attacker, all in black, still coming, arm stretched out holding the gun.  Then another man exploded from between two cars and tackled him to the ground.

"Hey!" was all my shooter managed to say before the new man reared back and punched him in the face, cracking his head back onto the concrete.  His limbs went limp.

Another of the men in black from the car came charging in.  The tackler leapt off the first man and made a lunge for the fallen gun, and I didn’t wait around to see what happened.  I ran again, for all I was worth to the opening onto the main street.

"Stop her!"

I heard the twang of several gunshots again, felt no pain, but did hear the gasp and heavy fall of someone else.  And then a third man in black ran in from the side, blocking my way out. I skidded to a halt with a scream, landed on my ass and looked up to see a another gun being levelled at me.  There was a roar from behind me, and a body barreled past - whoever was trying to save me was going to be too late though - I was scrabbling to my feet, but there was no way the man in black could miss me.  I heard a crack, and for an instant the air between the two men was lit by a ghostly white, spark. The man holding the gun spasmed and fell.

"Oh-shit, oh-shit!" I found my mouth saying, and wondered how long I’d been senselessly swearing.  The man wheeled around, and I could see no taser or weapon of any kind in his hands to have made that spark.  He wore a flapped cap and large, dark grey coat, and I held in a scream as he got one hand under my arm and hauled me up.

"Come on!  Run!" he ordered, already dragging me down the lane towards the lights on the main road.  "They won’t stay down for long."

I ran - I had no choice.

As we exploded out onto the main thoroughfare, with cars and even a few pedestrians going by, I tried to wrench out of his grasp and he let me go.

"Who are you?" I demanded.  My nose and chin hurt in a prickling way that did not bode well, and I could feel myself on the edge of hysteria.  I still couldn’t see his face well. His hat blocked most of the streetlight. The only reason I wasn’t running hell for leather at that second was that thing he’d done with the spark.  The only other person I’d met that could do something like that was Bardock.

"Not here," he said tersely.  "We need a car."

"I’m not getting in a car with you!" I told him.  "I’m not stupid!"

"Fine, then."

He grabbed my wrist and began hauling me in no uncertain way down the street, looking behind us over his shoulder.  As we came to a bus shelter I rushed towards it and wrapped myself around the pole out front.

"Calm down!" he snapped.  "The bus is almost here!"

I turned to see he was right; a bus was gliding into the stop, its well-lit interior populated with mostly students leaving downtown.

"You want me to get on the bus?" I asked dumbly.

"Yes, since you won’t take a car, and we need to be out of this vicinity, asap."

When the bus stopped next to us I made a rush for the opening door, raising my wrist to swipe my bracelet, but he caught it and forced it back down again.  Instead he took out a bracelet from his pocket, swiped that and said to the automatic driver, "Two fares."

"Two fares deducted," the pleasant AI replied from it’s speaker.  The turnstile in the door let me in just as we heard a yell from the street.  I rushed down the aisle and took the first empty seat, looking out the window.  The man was right at my heels, but before I could even get a glimpse of our pursuers he was pressing down on my head.

"Get down," he whispered.

I melted into the seat and then to the floor, while he crouched beside me.  A girl in the seat opposite watched us in concern, but the bus took off smoothly, doors closed.  He looked down the aisle, making sure no one had made it onto the bus behind us, and when he turned back I got the first good look at his face.  His eyes really were dark in his olive-tan skin and

my

mind

stopped.

My mouth opened, but I couldn’t get it to work.  I couldn’t believe it, and for a few seconds longer, I _didn’t_ believe it.  His expression turned quizzical as he watched my dumbfoundedness.

"Do you remember me?" he asked.

I reached up and pulled the hat from his head.  Tall spikes of black hair sprang up.

"Oh, my god!"

He gave a dry chuckle.  "Not quite."

"Vegeta!"


	2. Los Angeles - 2129

**CHAPTER TWO: LOS ANGELES 2129**

 

_"No, Miss Briefs, I need you to go further back than that."_

_I blink, my awareness of where I am returning for a moment.  I see the concrete walls and feel the cold metal chair digging into my back._

_"Go back further?"_

_"Yes.  Start at the beginning.  What led to your_ first _meeting with Vegeta?"_

_The urge to talk was overwhelming.  I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.  Perhaps I could bury my story in details?  But that probably wouldn’t work either - it was surely hopeless.  I chuckle._

_"Okay, then.  I’ll start right back at the beginning."_

...

My parents met at Cornell in 2100.  My father was doing a Master of Science at the same school of Bio-Engineering I now studied at.  My mother was doing a MA in Political Science - a ruse by her own admission. Though my mother is as sharp as they come, and did exceptionally well in her studies, she told my sister and I on a number of occasions that her true purpose at pursuing such a high level of education at a ranking university was to find a young man with a high earning potential and marry him, like the regressive lakefront Chicago princess she was.  She screwed up, though. My father was not the future government official she was looking for, but rather the brilliant and easy going engineer she fell in love with. That’s not to say I grew up poor - far from it. Life was very comfortable by the time I showed up.

My dad had been tinkering with the idea of starting his own company, creating his own inventions and wondering what he could possibly use to fund this effort when two things happened simultaneously - my father had a job offer from the military, and my mother got pregnant.  They were both living on small allowances from their families, and my mother’s family expressed great disappointment at her squandering her only chance of marrying into high status, so it had seemed to them that a swift wedding, and my father accepting military research with all its strings attached, was the best way to go forward.  

When my sister was born, my parents brought her home to a faceless military base in New Mexico.  My mother had to learn to do without those luxuries she expected for a while. My sister had quite a different childhood to mine, growing up in a tiny rural town, made up of families related to the base, drawing decent pay with good perks aside from the location, and the locals who were either struggling to break even in their agricultural jobs or given in entirely to hand-to-mouth poverty.  She spent her time wandering the prairie, being a nuisance to cattle with the other kids. When she was twelve she got drunk for the first time. When she was thirteen her first boyfriend rolled a tractor and was killed. When she was fourteen her best friend got pregnant.

I imagine my parents were relieved when my father’s job took us to a different military base in Nevada not long after I was born.  We lived nearly twenty miles from the base, in a nice, big house in a proper town. I went to school there for a while. I lived a semi-segregated life at school - all the “military brats” were treated with a certain degree of envy and disdain, in a reflection of the same division our parents experienced, even though we children didn’t know what happened on base any more than the townsfolk.  Whatever it was, the military paid well and insisted that their employees maintain the strictest secrecy, which the townsfolk interpreted as aloofness and elitism. When I went on playdates or to birthday parties it was always at the houses of military officers or researchers.

That phase of my life didn’t last long though.  In kindergarten, my teacher let me do whatever I wished.  I was free to join in with the rest of the class or pursue my own activities, but my first grade teacher soon had a list of complaints that she took to my parents.  These complaints included: questioning simple statements or commands, showing obvious signs of boredom when given ordinary tasks like sorting the wooden blocks by shape, losing interest in my work quickly and using the rest of the time to fidget, draw, talk, or else make a nuisance of myself by pestering her for more tasks to do.  Also, that I refused to read the words on the page in reading group, and instead made up stories to make the rest of the group laugh.

"Your daughter shows remarkable little interest in learning," she concluded.  This is one of my father’s favorite stories about my childhood, so he had quoted her to me often.  "I feel we need your help with her at home to alter her attitude towards her education and authority."

"What authority would that be?" my father had asked.

"Oh, _Trunks!_ " my mother had scolded him.  "Attitude is important of course, and we will speak to her."

"Thank you, Mrs Briefs.  I also think that a learning disabilities consultant could be useful."

"Wait!   _Why?_ " my mother had asked.

"To see if she has a learning disability, of course.  Telling a made up story instead of the one on the page may be a coping tactic for difficulty with reading."

"But Bulma has been reading since she was two and a half!"

The teacher had been speechless for a moment.  "Well. A disability consultant will give us a definite answer.  I think she may also have an attention deficit disorder." She drew out my workbook as exhibit A.  "I asked the class for a sentence about what they did on the weekend. She gave me this."

_Gray day_

_Blowing away_

_Bike is still broken_

_The neighbor won’t play_

_Pity me_

_The restless tot_

_Legos and a chocolate hot._

"Not a single finished sentence," the teacher expounded.  "And each start is completely unrelated to the attempt before."

"Are you an idiot?" my father had asked.

That’s when I’d been taken out of school.  My mother dropped out of the job she held at the town hall in order to homeschool me.  She had an all-you-can-eat approach to education, which I loved. No topic was barred - as soon as I was interested in a subject my mother judged I was ready to tackle it.  I had a first-year medical school level of understanding about human reproduction by the time I was eight, and I highly enjoyed history of physics and philosophy. She didn’t skimp on the home economics either, and my classes were usually held in the kitchen, where her lessons could be as curly as challenging me to find the best oven temperature to roast a pork loin, and then work out the accuracy of the the cooking times stated, using the volume of the cut, the starting temperature, and the desired internal temperature when cooked.  I studied while she organized her next book club meet-up and pointed me in the right direction to answer her questions or, increasingly, answer my own questions. I didn’t miss school, and didn’t really miss the other kids who were often mean to me, but I was lonely. The birthday party invitations became few and far between.

When I turned fourteen my father took a new position in California.  It would be mostly working from home, which he was happy about. They held a going away party at the house.  Among the guests were our next-door neighbors, and they brought their daughter - one of the few kids I still saw now and then.

Left alone in the rumpus room, we had one of our usual stilted conversations and I told her that, "I think moving to California is going to be good."

"Yeah, for sure," she agreed.  "I won’t have to pretend to be friends with you anymore."

And that had been my goodbye from Nevada.

...

_“I think you can skip a little further ahead than that."_

_"But I was staring at the beginning!"_

_A wearisome sigh.  "What brought you to your position at Illuminary Inc?"_

_..._

It was 2129 and I was at UCLA doing my first Masters in Psychology.  I had gotten my Bachelor of Arts in two years, and then my parents had moved back out of the city to be closer to dad’s lab.  They’d set me up in a boarding house run by a nice lady who promised to keep an eye on me, see that I ate right and keep only quality tenants in the other rooms, and she was true to her word.  My homesickness and anxiety at moving away from my parents was short lived, and, buoyed by Mrs Pérez’s homecooking, I was soon enjoying the life of an independent student. I still hadn’t gotten invited to parties as an undergraduate - I was years off being able to legally drink, even if I had been on the same social wavelength as my classmates - but amongst the MA students there was a certain breed that I fell in with.  They socialized in a manner of...competitive geekiness, I guess. We would go to classical concerts and afterwards argue about how the historical contexts of the piece had informed the compositions, or go to the planetarium and see who could impress the guides the most with our ley knowledge of space technology and astrophysics. My allowance was not enough to fund many of these outings, so I began looking for a job.

My chances were not good though.  Most jobs that could be done by sixteen year old could also be done by a robot, and much more reliably (not to mention cheaply).  I was perhaps way more qualified than the average sixteen year old, but translating a BA into a casual part time job was difficult, especially if there was also a twenty-one year old BA graduate gunning for that same social media officer job at the library.  I did a semester of lectures for the new class of BA students, and after that both my professors and myself had agreed that class work was not for me. It was one of the most excruciating experiences of my life, but I refuse to be embarrassed about that - not many people get to attempt teaching a class of eighteen year olds when they’re only sixteen themselves.

So I was very happy when one of those professors came to me with a job offer.  His name was Professor Gohan, who taught Eastern Philosophy. I had had a general philosophy class during my Bachelor’s that he had been the supervisor of, so I knew him a little, even if I had never continued philosophy.

...

"Young Bulma!"  His wizened old face crinkled into its habitual smile.  He stopped in the middle of the breezeway between buildings.  I was in a hurry, but I stopped, too. You didn’t ignore a greeting by someone as important as Prof Gohan.  "I hear you are in need of a job."

"Oh.  Yes! I am.  Do you know of anyone hiring?"

"I do, if you would consider babysitting."

I hadn’t before, but I wasn’t about to turn it down.  "Yeah, okay. Tell me more."

He smiled and took a mini display from his shirt pocket and rolled it out.  He flicked through a few screens and then presented me with a picture of a young boy.  He looked about eight or nine, grinning mischievously at the camera. The picture began to move.

"Are you ready, Grandpa?" the boy said.

"I’m ready," replied Gohan’s disembodied voice.

The boy threw a few chillingly precise and powerful looking punches, leapt into a high kick, a spinning kick, and then somersaulted backwards to land cleanly on his feet.

"Ta da!"

"Well done!"

The picture froze again.

"My grandson, Goku," he said to me.

If there was Asian influence in the boy’s features it was hard to discern.  Professor Gohan was Asian, or at least partly Asian of some extraction - I didn’t know him well enough to ask.  Wherever his blood hailed from, he was probably second generation at the very least, as there hadn’t been any immigration allowed from the old countries of the Eastern Empire since a decade after the Two Day War, when the newly formed Super States of America had closed its borders.  He was old, but he couldn’t have been as old as eighty.

"Oh.  Neat. He looks like a cool kid."  He actually looked like a serious worry to me - no kid that age should be so good at martial arts.

"He is.  He’s a sweet boy.  He and his mother live with me.  She’s a nurse, and she’s often on long shifts into the night.  We’re looking for someone to to do some after-school care for him a few evenings a week when I need to do evening lectures."

"Oh, okay."  I wondered how much the going rate for childcare was, and if this kid would knock my block off if he didn’t like me.  "He looks like he doesn’t need much taking care of," I joked lamely.

Gohan thought this was pretty funny, though.  "Oh, he’ll do all right if anyone tries to break into the house, but I’m afraid my grandson has less sense than even the average twelve year old."

"I hate to ask, but...he doesn’t have behavioral problems, does he?"

"No!  He’s a good boy.  He’ll do what you tell him to.  Perhaps his biggest issue is that he’ll do whatever almost _anyone_ tells him to do.  So we just need a minder; someone to lend him some common sense.  He’s too young to stay home legally, anyway. What do you think?"

"I’ll give it a go."

"Excellent!"

...

The boy stared at me with wide, dark brown eyes.  The impression of bewilderment was echoed by the messy spikes of black hair that stuck out in every direction from his head.  He looked the same age as he had in the video - a sturdy eight or nine, but Gohan assured me he was twelve.

"You’re my new babysitter?"

"Yup."

Our first awkward meeting was in Gohan’s sitting room with Gohan and Goku’s mother, Gine, looking on.  Well, it was awkward for me, anyway. Goku seemed not to have much in the way of self-consciousness. Gine was a quiet woman - quite pretty, dark haired, her half-Japanese features more pronounced than Goku’s, but she looked tired.  After our own introduction she sat mutely while Goku gave me the cheerful tire-kicking.

"Do you do any martial arts?"

"Er, no."

"Not even boxing?"

"No even boxing, sorry."

"Oh.  Do you play video games of martial arts?"

"Yeah, sure."  Well, I _could_.  I had no real experience or inclination to, but if getting paid meant sitting around playing violent video games with this boy, I was sure I could do it.

"Cool!  Do you like exploring?"

I looked towards Gine.  "Is it okay to take him outside?"

Gine gave a strained smile, and Gohan answered for her.

"Just try keeping him inside all day - he’ll drive you up the wall."

...

Gohan’s house was in Bel Air, and was modestly proportioned and appointed by my standards.  It was probably forty years old at most, but stuffed with old books and artifacts, mostly Japanese, but a smattering from all over Asia, books, knick-knacks, curiosities, and even more books.  In short, it looked exactly how I imagined the house of a professor of Eastern Philosophy to look.

All the super-rich people who survived the nuclear strikes that took out downtown LA, Burbank, and Anaheim had cleared out of LA and never come back, and their houses had mostly been demolished rather then restored.  UCLA itself had been abandoned for a dozen years before relocating. The campus itself hadn’t been extensively damaged, so fifty years after the Two Day War it returned to its original home. Not everyone was pleased about that at the time, but the government was adamant that the fallout had dissipated and that the city of Los Angeles be reclaimed from the husk it had become.  In the time I had known the city I thought it fascinating that it had been a site of great destruction. At least in the parts of LA I frequented, there was lots of open parkland, suburbs with wide roads, and big houses with generous yards that were relatively cheap, thanks to peoples’ continued fear of radioactive contaminants.

"It’s perfectly safe," my father had assured my mom and I when we had moved there.  "The government is not playing bull on this one. I know for sure, or else I wouldn’t have accepted this position.  I’ll bring a geiger counter home if it worries you that much."

Bits of famous structures that had survived the blasts had been worked into monuments and shrines; memorials to its previous life as the world capital of film entertainment.  More fascinating to me were the few small cordoned off areas that the government—or developers—hadn’t gotten around to bulldozing yet. Here there was some actual residue of radioactive material, so I daren’t go in, but I watched every video I could of robots or suited people exploring the crumbling ruins.  In South LA, which had survived the blasts very well, there were also a lot of living ruins that I didn’t explore because it was hostile territory. That part of the city had never been fully evacuated, and the damage done to its inhabitants was evident on their deformed faces and bodies, or so the rumor went.  I never got close enough to see, other than through documentaries about the New Missions they occasionally played on TV. I remember looking out the window as a car took us home from a trip to San Clemente and seeing mile after mile of barricade made of corrugated iron, concrete rubble and rusting hulks of old gas powered cars.

"What’s behind there?" I’d asked my parents.

"The South East Wilderness," my dad told me.

I stared, fascinated, a thrill running down my spine.  "Is it as bad as they say?"

"I’ve no idea, princess.  I have no reason to go there, and curiosity is certainly not enough to get me to approach the gates."

"If it’s so horrible in there, why don’t people leave and come live further North where all the new houses and shopping centers are?"

My mom laughed.  "They don’t operate in our economy any more.  They have no money to buy a house anywhere."

There were a couple of isolated ghettos around what’s left of New York and Washington DC, too.  Outer suburbs and satellite cities that had survived the main city’s destruction, with significant populations of people who were either too poor or too stubborn to leave.  They must have suffered more than anyone from fallout sickness and the cancer epidemic that followed the war. To me it was almost unbelievable that any had survived to a second generation, let alone a third or fourth.  Even in Santiago and Buenos Aires, five thousand miles from the nearest nuclear fallout zone, cancer rates had spiked. It took eighty years for cancer rates to fall to what they had been before the war. And the mutations!  Live births had also plummeted after the war, and infant and childhood death had skyrocketed because congenital deformities became so common. This was the main cause of population collapse, not the war itself. Cancer and genetic damage.

Those who stayed near the fallout zone had suffered doubly when local government and services had been withdrawn.  Those resourceful ones that survived did so without aid or law or even running water as time went by. They had existed as isolated urban wildernesses that the post-Aftermath SSA government was neither interested in, nor ruled.  Only now that the New York and Los Angeles areas were seen as desirable land again had any “outreach” been bothered with. The New Missions were part of that, but-

...

_"I’m quite versed in twenty-second century history.  Get to your point, please."_

_I laughed, my head lolling.  I was so dizzy. The man’s face loomed over mine as my head fell back, his golden eyes narrowed in irritation and I laughed again._

_"What is the joke?" he asked._

_"You’re so good looking," I replied.  "A bastard like you shouldn’t be allowed."_

_He sighed.  "Tell me about Goku."_

...

The first time I babysat Goku he took me to the end of his backyard and led me up into the scrub and trees of the hill behind his house.  At that point I was by no means an outdoorsy kind of girl, and I was verging on panic most of the time.

"Stick to the path!" I told him, or, "We need to take note of where we’ve been or how else will we find our way back?"

Goku had only laughed at me.  "I come up here nearly everyday!  I know all the paths in the hills.  And how can we get lost when we know that in that direction is grandpa’s street, and in the other direction is the street were Master Roshi lives?"

I came to realize my anxiety was foolish, but it took me some weeks of repeated exposure to hiking for me to realize that.  I was still scared of rattlesnakes. There was rumored to be mutated ones around LA that had lost their rattle, and so the only warning you got was a bite to the ankle.  The first time we encountered a snake crossing the path I screeched and ran, scaling a nearby boulder to get away from it.

"What’re you doing up there?" Goku asked.

"S-s-snake!" I replied, pointing in the direction it had headed off through the grass.

"Snake?" he replied.  "But it was only a gopher snake.  They’re okay."

"How can you be sure it wasn’t a rattlesnake?"

"It didn’t look like one, and it didn’t move like one."

"How can you be sure?"

"I see ‘em sometimes.  They don’t go so fast as that one, and their pattern’s kinda dull.  Sometimes I’ve seen them on that rock you’re on."

I screamed again and flung myself backwards off the rock, landing badly on my hands and butt in the dry grass.  Goku was merrily skipping away off the path and under the bushes. I patted the sandy dirt off myself. I was just wondering where he’d got to and if I should start hollering for him when he reappeared.

"Yeah, it’s just a gopher snake," he announced, holding out his hands to offer me something.  I already had it in my hands before I registered what it was. I screamed again and tossed the thing straight up in the air in order to run away.  I made it twenty yards down the path before I thought to look back to see if Goku was okay. He had caught the snake.

"That wasn’t very nice," he told me off.  "You scared Mr Gophersnake!" and then he proceeded to reassure, pet, and coo to the reptile in his hands.

Roaming in the hills was something we did most times I babysat him.  Prof Gohan assured me this was fine and permissible behavior. My parents would have probably had more issue with _me_ wandering around in the outdoors than Gohan and Gine did with Goku.  Honestly, in the outdoors at least, it felt more like he was taking care of me than the other way around.  He did eventually teach me the difference between rattlesnakes and the other common snakes found in the hills.  I always remained wary of encountering them, and often thought I should buy a snake venom kit, but I never got around to it.  Goku reassured me that they didn’t want to bite me if they could help it. We saw one every few weeks or so, or heard one, rattling away in warning in the grass off the path.  It made me feel like a real risk-taker, and highly independent. Even more so than living sans parents, I felt grown up. And really, what was there to fear when we both had our wristbands?

We didn’t just stick to the one hill, either.  Sometimes we’d cross the valley, or take the bus to another valley before starting out.  Goku took me up a hill to what became a new favorite spot of mine. From the ridgeline you could look down and see the ring fenced area of old downtown LA and bits of Hollywood that hadn't yet been demolished.  We returned many times, and I borrowed my parents’ binoculars after that first time so we could marvel at the ruins. However, I also borrowed my father’s geiger counter and “forgot” to ever bring it back. A snake bite was one thing, but wandering fecklessly into a valley harboring alpha or beta radiation particles was another.

Once, at this spot, Goku had been viewing the ruins through the binoculars when I saw movement further down the hill we were on.

“Hey, look over there!  There are people heading down towards the corden!”

He had checked, then trained the binoculars on them.  ‘Ah!” he said quietly. “Don’t move.”

Nothing could have alarmed me more.  “Why not?” I whispered back.

“They’re from the Wilderness.”

I froze.  He handed me the binoculars, but I just stood there, staring at the line of figures trailing through the scrub.

“Don’t you want to look?” he asked.  “I thought you’d want to see them.”

“Shouldn’t we get out of here?” I had asked.  “We could be in danger.”

Goku chuckled at that.  “No!”

“Then why did you say ‘don’t move’?”

“Because if they see us they’ll hide!  They don’t like being spotted by strangers.”

“You’ve seen them before?”

“Yep, twice.  I tried to go talk to them, but they are pretty shy.”

I brought the binoculars to my face, curiosity winning out over fear.  I saw a string of adults, deeply tanned or dark skinned, carrying slings laden with cargo.  Their clothes were threadbare and dusty, but otherwise, from this distance, they didn't look as wild as my imaginations.

“Are you sure they’re not dangerous?”  I could see a couple of long, stick like objects, and my imagination elaborated them into bows and quivers of arrows.

“I think they won’t try and hurt you unless you try and hurt them.”

From then on I kept as much an eye out for Wilderpeople as I did rattlesnakes, but that was the only time I ever spotted them in the hills.

...

I wondered on our first ever outing who Master Roshi was, and didn’t need to wait long to find out.  The second time I ever came to Gohan’s house the “Master” was still there.

"Bulma!  Come meet Master Roshi!" Goku said as soon as the door was open.  Exuberance was one of his finest qualities. It made him so present that no matter what pensive mood of pretentious thought I was having, he could blow it out of my head in two seconds flat.  Sometimes it could get annoying, but generally it just made him fun to be around.

"He’s the one that teaches me stuff, like multiplication tables and karate!"

"O-kay."

He took my hand and dragged me inside, into the dining room where the table had been set up in a rough kind of classroom with a small, ancient whiteboard on an easel and stacks of textbooks and notebooks.  A wiry old man, older than Gohan even, was standing up, back bent a little, anticipating my entrance.

"Ah ha!" he said.  "You never mentioned your babysitter was such a looker, Goku."

For a moment I was shocked while Goku looked at me skeptically.

"You think she’s a looker?" he asked.

I flushed red.  "Yes, I am _fairly_ good looking!" I snapped at him, then turned to the old man.  He was wearing sunglasses inside the house, and this did not lessen my impression of his creepiness.  "Although it’s quite distasteful for an old man to say so of a young girl when first meeting her!"

He wiggled a brow.  "Then I shall have to get to know you better."

I gawped, then turned to Goku.  "This guy is your _teacher_?"

"He is," said a new voice from behind me.  I swivelled and there was another kid returning from the bathroom.  He was wearing what looked to be the orange robes of a novice Buddhist monk, and his head was shaved.

"Who are you?"

He swaggered to the nearest dining room chair - which was almost as tall as he was - and leant against it in exaggerated casualness.

"The name’s Krillin.  Don’t wear it out."

I was stumped for a moment, then I turned to Goku.  "Holy crap. And I thought _you_ were weird."

I soon had the situation explained to me.  Master Roshi had been a mentor to Professor Gohan in both philosophy and karate, but was now retired.  Roshi had decided to take private students to supplement his pension, and had taken on the job of schooling Goku.

"Wait - you don’t go to school?" I asked Goku in horror.

"You said you didn’t go to school either."

"Yes, but that was because...well, school was too easy for me."

"Maybe I’d find school too easy, too," Goku suggested.  I glanced at the whiteboard and the basic geometric forms drawn and labelled there and doubted it.

"Don’t you want to go to school?"

Goku considered it, sucking on the popsicle I’d been told was okay to let him have.  The schoolbooks were packed away now, and we sat on the back porch, slowly heating up and doing our best to not let the popsicles win and melt down our hands and elbows.  Well, the boys and I had popsicles. Master Roshi was chugging one of the professor’s beers.

"Well.  Maybe," Goku said.  "But I heard they have lots of rules at school and make you sit down a lot.  Master Roshi teaches us stuff and then he lets us do karate and teaches us loads of other stuff, too!  Not just boring classroom stuff! And Mom and Grandpa say it’s dangerous-"

"To go picking up ideas from the government!" Master Roshi interrupted. “The government-run schools are nothing but propaganda camps, readying the robots for their obedient SSA life.  You don’t wanna go inviting the government inside your children’s heads."

"That’s why my parents have Master Roshi teach me," said Krillin.  

"Do they not trust the government either?"

Krillin pointed at his robe.  "My parents have some strong beliefs, as you can see.  They don’t want me to grow up with my third eye closed."

Roshi gave a discrete cackle, and I decided I would question Gohan and Gine on the suitability of him as Goku’s primary educator.  "Boy, your parents are more pious than Buddha himself."

Krillin gave a soft groan of agreement.

"Aren’t you Buddhist, too, Master Roshi?" Goku asked.

"Well.  If you held a gun to my head and made me choose a religion, I guess."

"You guys are kooks.  My dad works for the government," I told them.  Apparently this was more shocking a revelation than I expected.  All three of them sat at alert and stared at me.

"What’s he do?" Roshi asked.

"He’s a scientist," I told them.  "An engineer."

The old man relaxed again, and, seeming to take their cues from him, so did the boys.

"There’s nothing wrong with working for the government," I told him, annoyed with the attitude.  It wasn’t the first time I’d encountered this kind of discrimination. I’d had to deal with it all the time in Nevada, even when the base was only twenty miles away.  "Lots of people do. Who would run the country, maintain the roads, and run the schools and hospitals if it weren’t for the government?"

"You forgot the army, air force, and navy," Roshi prompted.

"Well someone’s got to defend us from the Eastern Empire rolling over us."

"A different government, perhaps?  Maybe we could vote to see who gets the chance to try leading the States next?"

"We have a very strong government doing a very good job of keeping us safe from the EE and the EAU.  Why fix what isn’t broken? Changing governments would be a massive distraction that could jeopardize our national security."

Roshi gave me a smile that showed off two missing front teeth and shook his head.  "My dear, your faith is impressive."

I glowered back at him.

"Goku, do you feel like going for a walk?" I asked.

...

So Krillin was our third companion more often than not.  Sometimes I would get a message to meet Goku at Master Roshi’s house, which he shared with another ancient, retired educationist called Dr Turtle who was as slow as his name.  Master Roshi himself was disgustingly spry, and even demonstrated karate moves to the boys, although he had to be pushing ninety. In that house I had cause to wonder if ninety year old men still masturbated, as the shelves were stacked with vintage titty mags and there was a calendar of nude pin ups in the bathroom.

Other times I would get a message to meet them at the library, museum, a park, or even the laundromat and supermarket.

"I ran out of toilet paper!" Roshi protested when I took him to task about it.

"It couldn"t wait?  What quality of education are they going to get in the toiletries aisle?"

"I can think of quite a few things young men generally leave school not knowing that can be learned in the toiletries aisle!  Keep up that nagging, young lady, and you’ll make someone a very typical wife one day."

"Well, you’re already a dirty, sexist old goat of a man!  And a terrible influence on these kids!"

That day our argument was cut short by the security guard come to see us out.

As it was, Krillin seemed quite savvy despite Master Roshi’s style of casual education.  Goku was hopelessly naive, though. He seemed to trust practically everyone, and was literally ready to make friends with every single person he met, which was a lot, as he seemed to have no qualm about rolling right up to strangers and introducing himself if he was interested in what they were doing, or even just their appearance.  As his minder it was mortifying and sometimes scary. Sure, sometimes it was fun to find that the seven foot guy in gang colors was happy to chat, but mostly it just gave me a heart attack, so I took to walking hand in hand with him when we were in the streets or the park. At least then I could try and stop him. I spent the first few weeks trying to work out a diagnosis for him, sure that he was displaying some signs of developmental disarray, but at that point I had very little practical experience of developmental disorders.  After a while though, I stopped trying to figure him out and just learned to anticipate him. He was just Goku, a boy of unique disposition and eccentricity.

I very rarely saw Gine.

"When will she be home?" I asked Goku one evening when I was still trying to figure out his diagnosis.  I hoped to fish for information.

"Er, two more days, I think."

"Two more _days_?  How long has she been gone?"

"Since Sunday night."

"For work?"

"Yeah, she works real hard."

This short conversation was followed by an uncharacteristic withdrawal by Goku.  I had taken him to the boarding house to show him where I lived, and now I was walking him to the university to meet his grandpa.

"What’s wrong?" I asked him eventually.

"Oh, nothing."  He sighed. "I just worry about her."

"Why?  Is her job dangerous or something?"

"Yeah."  

I couldn’t imagine what kind of nursing job could be dangerous enough to worry about.  "She’s always fine, though, right?"

"Yeah.  But it’s not just that.  She gets sad a lot. I miss her and she misses me.  We both miss Grandma. And she misses dad, too. When she gets home she’s happy, but at the same time, not really.  I can see she’s still sad and worried underneath it."

"Oh."  I was not at all equipped to deal with family grief.  Of course, I’d learned a lot about grief processes by then, but I didn’t have any experience or training as a therapist.  I liked the theory of psychology, not the messy application. "Erm. Do you miss your dad, too?"

"Not really.  I mean, I never met him."

"Is he...dead?"

"I don’t think so."

"You mean you don’t know what happened to him?  He left your mom?"

He looked like he’d never considered this.  "I guess so. But I don’t think he wanted to."

The mystery of Goku’s father remained a mystery for some time.  I asked Gohan about him, and his answers were vague. He told me that he was someone his late wife used to care for, and that was how Gine got caught up with him.  But he was part of a bad crowd and couldn’t break free of that life. Reading between the lines I took it that Goku’s father was either a drug-addict or a gang member or both, and now missing.  It made me sad for Goku, but when I brought it up with him again he didn’t want to talk about it. I can’t think of a single time after that that we spoke about him.

I know it kind of seems odd, but Goku became the best friend I’d ever had to that point, and Krillin became my friend, too.  I spent more time in their company than anyone else’s, even more than my friends from university. That group drifted apart after one boy quit the program and another got a boyfriend.  I wasn’t comfortable hanging around alone with the remaining boy, or man really, as he was twenty three and had started making hints that we could be a couple. Eventually I found myself hanging out with Goku and Krillin on the weekends, when I wasn’t even being paid for it.

I felt a bit embarrassed about this in front of Gohan.  I mean, does a sixteen year old girl have any more right be be friends with a twelve year old boy than a twenty three year old man does to ask out a sixteen year old girl?  Plus, I think we both knew that if he stopped paying me I’d still come around, and I liked money enough to want him _not_ to stop paying me.  He seemed to approve though.  Maybe he knew that a good portion of that money was spent buying snacks for his grandson, as Goku seemed to get hungry a _lot_.  When he was hungry was nearly the only time he was bad tempered, and I reacted in a way that I knew would only allow this bad behavior to continue; stuffing him with the nearest taco, sandwich, pie or cake I could find, but hey, he was my friend, not my son.

My days consisted of research lab work, study, making graphs, writing up results, hitting the related material up, and hanging around the neighborhood with my bros, looking for trouble like a twelve year old - something I had never done as an actual twelve year old.  I justified this by considering Goku and Krillin as a case study of socially isolated adolescence. If I’d had greater self-awareness at the time I would have found an even more diverting case study in myself - the girl with the delayed childhood. In truth I was completely submerged in our play.  Sometimes in the park I’d make up stories and then the boys would act it out with me, often using their martial arts on each other. It took me a while to get used to the fact that they’d hit each other or wrestle _just for the fun of it_.  But, though there were often bruises, there were never tears.

They even got to use their karate for real in front of me.  There was another trio that often hung out at the same local shops where we’d go for ice cream.  They were my age; a short, sickly looking boy, a taller, solid looking guy with a hangdog face, and a pretty, black haired girl who liked to wear a trench coat even the the LA heat.

"Shoplifters," Krillin would always whisper to me whenever we saw them.  "Pilaf’s gang."

"Who’s Pilaf?"

"The short guy."

One afternoon we went into the parlour for ice creams, and, as I led the way back out, a hand snatched the cone right out of mine.  Pilaf laughed and leapt away. I hadn’t even had a chance to lick the ice cream yet. Without thinking, I lunged after him, snatching at the cone with one hand and slapping him in the face with the other.

"Thief!"

The ice cream plummeted to the pavement.

Pilaf shook off the slap.  "Oh, you’re gonna regret that!"  He grabbed me by the shoulders. "Shu!  Mai! Get her money!"

His minions advanced, but before I could be mugged, Krillin and Goku exploded from the parlour.  After a short, vicious fight, during which, several were knocked to the pavement, I was freed, wallet unmolested, though somewhat covered in ice cream, and Pilaf’s gang were running away nursing injuries.

"Oh, my god, guys!"  I said to Goku and Krillin.  "You’re my heroes!"

"Can I get a kiss as a reward?" Krillin suggested.

"Can I get another ice cream as my reward?" was Goku’s idea.  "Mine fell on the ground!"

Goku got his reward, but Krillin did not.

I was transformed through their friendship.  I became a girl who wore shorts and t-shirts everyday, and sneakers or hiking boots in anticipation of the next adventure, while the kitten heels and blouses my mom had helped me pick out languished in the closet.  I invested in a push bike. My stamina increased along with my confidence. I began to detect muscles on limbs that had been fairly shapeless until then. I picked up a tan. I found a way to turn off my obsessive quest for knowledge.

We had many adventures, mostly banal, but some exciting.  When I turned eighteen we went camping together in the desert.  I supported them in karate tournaments. I attempted to patch up the holes Master Roshi had left in Goku’s education.  Many times I tried to get them to meet my parents, but somehow our plans always ended up cancelled by Prof Gohan needing Goku to stay home for this or that.  I started to wonder if anti-government discrimination went deep in this family. When I talked to Goku about the government he claimed he didn’t know about things like that.

I finished my masters and ploughed straight into a PhD.  Inspired by Goku and Krillin, my subject was an examination of how peers, or lack of them, influenced adolescent development.  Master Roshi seemed to think this was funny when I mentioned it to him, and by the time I finished writing the damn thing I came to know that it was a bit of a joke amongst members of my faculty.  Somehow, when I was coming up with my thesis idea, it just never occurred to me that it was basically about _myself_.

Goku and Krillin turned fourteen and didn’t need a babysitter any more.  Not legally at least, but I still saw them. Perhaps less though. I told Gohan he could stop paying me.  My grant money was more than enough pocket money while my parents were still paying for my bed and board at Mrs Perez’s.  Doing the PhD was the first time I encountered work being hard. Like, it took actual effort and time - slightly more effort and time than I wanted to give - and was sometimes (usually) more frustrating than fun, but I supposed there was a reason why doctorates were prized.  I conducted interviews, scoured the land for case studies, and ran research lab tests and tried to coax the sometimes contradictory data into a conclusion.

I was twenty when I was ready to be done with it.  Goku and Krillin were sixteen. Goku had shot up in the last year.  He no longer looked young for his age, but a handsome young man. I couldn’t help but think that if we were both still single in a few years time that Bulma and Goku could be a thing… At least if he could hold a normal conversation with a stranger without managing to insult or embarrass them with his shameless curiosity and ignorance.

Poor Krillin though didn’t even break five feet.

"Maybe you’re a dwarf?" Goku suggested to him one afternoon when Krillin was in full lamentation mode.

"A dwarf!" roared Krillin.  "A dwarf would be something, at least!  I’m too tall to be a dwarf! I’m just really damn short!  How about that?"

"Meh.  Your parents don’t feed you enough, and the food they give you is funny."

"I eat plenty.  Not everyone is a bottomless pit like you, Goku."

It was during that conversation that I first wondered if Krillin _was_ a dwarf.  There was something about his tiny button nose and his short, stocky limbs.  I’d never seen a dwarf in real life. The government screening of fetuses and babies for genetic abnormalities saw to that, and some forms of dwarfism were catalogued as chromosomal mutations.  I knew that if mutants weren’t terminated before birth they were sterilized, in order not to let their damaged DNA be propagated back into the gene pool, thus preserving a healthy population. I began to wonder if religion was the only reason that Krillin’s parents kept him out of school.  Perhaps he was also a genetic fugitive. The idea troubled me. I would never turn in a friend, but...

"And what are you looking at?" he demanded, catching me mid-speculation.

"Just a really short dude, dude."

"Dude!"

...

_"Corporal, take note of that.  A genetic fugitive by the name of Krillin living in Los Angeles.  Age would be approximately twenty seven."_

_"Yes, sir."_

_I moaned, realizing what I’d just let slip.  I knew Krillin was no longer in Los Angeles, but just enough sense was returning to me to stop me from blurting out that fact, too._

_"And then perhaps Miss Briefs would like another glass of water and another dose of serum?"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys are liking it so far! I'll be posting two chapters a day until it's done.


	3. Los Angeles - 2133

**CHAPTER THREE: LOS ANGELES 2133**

 

Those years in Los Angeles were the best of my life.  I was so educated and yet so ignorant. I laughed my ass off when Goku asked me one day why I sometimes grew blue hair at my scalp instead of purple.  He didn’t realize that I dyed my hair obsessively, even after four years of knowing me. I dyed it purple when I came to LA, convinced that it was my color, and kept up the habit until I ended up in prison, for which I am glad, now.  The hair color, not the prison sentence, that is. Anyway, I thought he was ignorant when I lived in my bubble, undisturbed by the reality of my world or the reality the boy I was best friends with lived in.

As the time came that I had to defend my thesis, my parents offered to take me and my friends out to dinner in town afterwards.  I asked Goku, Krillin, Gohan, and Gine to come. Gine I expected to say no, and really, I only asked her out of politeness. In four years of friendship with her son I’d barely gotten to know her.  She only seemed to be at home on Saturday nights and Sunday days times.

I asked her about this once, confused that Gohan had told me she worked night shifts, but she never seemed to be home six days a week.

"Oh, that used to be true.  But I now have a place near the hospital and come home on the weekends."

"Isn’t that...hard?" I asked her.  I was thinking of Goku and how much he missed her, and to me it didn’t seem fair.

"Of course."

“You know, Goku misses you.  And he’s worried about you. Do you ever think about getting a job closer to home?”

“I do.”  Her tone was sharp, but I still pushed my luck.

“So why don’t you?”

“I do what I have to.”  And then she had left the room, and me feeling abashed.

When I asked Goku and Krillin they had both said yes, they’d love to come, but Goku had come back to me the next day looking apologetic when he told me, "I do want to come, but Mom and Grandpa are probably not going to let me."

"I figured as much," I said, angry already.  

So when I asked Gohan to confirm if he was coming the day before the event, I was not surprised when he had apologised, saying that the family would be out of town that day visiting his sister in law, who was sick.  Goku had looked furious, but said nothing, arms folded as he sat rigid on the sofa next to me.

"Are you sure?" I asked.  "It’s a very important day to me."

"Of course it is, Bulma.  I remember my own thesis defense well."  He smiled. "We would be there if we could, but it’s just not possible."

I simmered for a moment, but it didn’t take long for my sense of injustice to get the better of me.  

"I don’t believe you," I stated, looking Gohan dead in the eye.  He stared back, the steely gaze out of place in his eyes and their drooping bags.

"But Gine, Goku, and I will still not be coming."

"This is such—!" I cut myself short of swearing at the old man.  This thing about not meeting my parents was the one thing that hurt and angered me about being friends with Goku.  "Look, Professor, I know you don’t like the government for whatever reason, but my father is not the government! He works for them - I mean, someone has to!"

"It is not personal, Bulma," he told me, with way more calm than I was displaying.  "You love and trust your father. I do not know him."

"So you won’t even share the room with him?  That is so biased! So discriminatory! I’m surprised you even let  _ me  _ in your house!  I probably bring the stink in with me!"

This apparently annoyed the professor.  "Don’t be absurd!"

I stood up, upset almost to tears that it had come to a row with Gohan, someone I liked and respected.  Goku caught my hand though, and stood next to me. I could see the appeal in his eyes - this was upsetting him, too.  

"Wait," he told me, and then turned to Gohan.  "Please, Grandpa! Surely it wouldn’t hurt to meet them once.  They’re just  _ people! _ "

"No!"  The forcefulness of that word rocked us both back.  Goku dropped my hand to square off with his grandpa.  

"But Grandpa-"

"That is  _ final _ , Goku.  You are not going to this dinner!"

I stood there in horror, wondering if this would be the last time I ever saw Professor Gohan, because I couldn't see our acquaintance surviving this.

Goku took a deep breath, standing tall between me and Gohan.  The height difference between the two was stark. He now topped his grandpa by almost a foot, and when he put his hands on his hips I noticed anew how thick with muscle his forearms were getting.  Gohan looked older and more shrunken next to him.

"Why not?" Goku asked, in a deeper, more commanding tone than I’d ever heard him use.

"You know why not, you young fool!"

"There won’t be any danger.  And if there is, I can take care of myself now."

"Pfft!" was what Gohan had to say about that.  "Keep your mouth closed, and sit down if you haven’t anything more sensible to say, child."  He placed a hand on Goku’s puffed out chest and shoved him back towards the sofa. Goku took half a step back and then resisted.  Then there was an odd pop, and the professor sagged to the floor.

Goku and I cried out at the same time.

"What happened?" I said as I rushed to Gohan’s side.  Goku dropped to his knees beside him.

"Grandpa!" he yelled.  "I think I killed him!"

I shot a look at Goku’s face, and then looked at Gohan’s rapidly paling one.  My fingers were already reaching for the pulse at his neck as I started to feel a little faint myself.  He did look a little bit dead - there was something strangely inanimate about his face.

"I can’t find a pulse," I heard myself saying.  Goku gripped the man’s shirt front and wailed, collapsing over Gohan’s still chest.  I shoved him. "Goku! Do you have a defib in your first aid kit? Goku!" He didn’t react fast enough, and I grabbed him by the hair and hauled his head up.  I had no idea I was that strong. "Do you have a defib in your first aid kit?" I shouted in his face. His expression went blank.

"I-I don’t know!"

"Find it!" I told him.  He tore away, rubber legged as I pulled Gohan flat on his back.  I could feel no breath on my face when I bent over his, so I grabbed his head and chin and tilted it back to open his airway.  I pinched his nose and made a seal over his mouth with mine - it was utterly surreal to be doing this on a person I knew instead of a training dummy.  Dummies don’t have scratchy grey stubble or tea-breath.

I blew two quick breaths, waiting to see if his chest would rise again by itself, but it didn’t.  I changed positions, placing my stacked hands on his sternum and pushed down sharply, again and again, counting the beats until I realized I couldn’t remember how many to do.  I heard the sounds of things crashing to the ground in the bathroom. I did two more breaths, then began the compressions again.

"Wristband, gazpacho!" I shouted, activating the voice control on my wristband.

"How may I help you?" it asked.

"Call an ambulance!" I gasped out, not letting up on the compressions.  "This location - a heart attack victim."

"You would like me to call an ambulance to this location for a heart attack victim?" it repeated calmly.

"Yes!"

"Emergency services have been alerted."

Goku came back into the room holding a sealed plastic packet.  "Is this it?" he asked, brandishing the tangle of wires and pads.  He was just about as pale as Gohan.

"Yes!  Get his shirt off!"

I opened the packet while Goku tore his grandpa’s shirt clean down the front with one powerful motion.  There was a diagram inside the packet, and I tried to make my brain absorb it instantly before I placed the pads where it said to.  I pressed the button.

"Charging." said a tinny voice from a tiny speaker.  "Get clear!"

Gohan convulsed as the charge went through him.

"No pulse," the voice grimly announced.  "Charging. Get clear."

Gohan convulsed again, and I found I was clinging to Goku’s side, both of us sobbing in terror.

"No pulse.  Administer two resuscitation breaths."

I scrambled to obey.

"Charging.  Get clear."

Gohan convulsed a third time.

"Pulse detected.  Call an ambulance.  Place patient in the recovery position, if it is safe to do so.  Do not remove defibrillator until medical help arrives."

We cried out in relief, and Goku wrapped his arms around my shoulders, almost crushing me with his hug.

"He’s alive, he’s alive!  You saved him, Bulma!"

It seemed like forever before we heard the thrum of a hovercopter in the street outside.  I ran outside to greet them as they touched down in the middle of the road. The rest happened very quickly, as paramedics checked his condition, put him on a stretcher and ushered him and us onto the copter.  Gohan came round, groggily, but didn’t seem to be able to speak more than moan. Goku gripped his hand all the way to the hospital.

...

At the hospital some nurses and doctors were quick to surround Gohan in bustling, quiet urgency as they hooked him up to a variety of equipment.  Goku and I stood, nervous, on the edge of the emergency ward room, but things slowly calmed. Blood was drawn, a reassuring, steady beep was heard from the monitor, and the nurses were talking to Gohan.

"What happened?" he asked them.

"You’ve had a bit of a scare.  We’re just finding out what’s wrong right now."

"Oh."  His face grayed again, and his head sank back onto the gurney.  The reassuring beep became a lot less steady, and Goku rushed forward.  A nurse wheeled around and caught him by the shoulders.

"We need some space to work, young man.  Calm down - things are not too bad at this moment."

We retreated to the threshold again, and Goku gripped my hand, completely unconsciously, I think.

"We should call your mom," I told him.

He shook his head.  "Not yet."

"The S-ST wave is out of whack," a doctor observed, watching a feed from an ECG.  Then she swept out of the room, heading to where the paramedics were still filling out forms at the emergency ward’s nurses’ station.  She spoke to them in a low voice, looking often at us before returning, holding out her hands to usher us into a corner.

"You’re the patient's grandson?" she asked Goku.

"Yes."

"And you’re his friend, who helped resuscitate him?"

"Yes," I replied.

"I was wondering if you could describe your grandfather’s symptoms before his collapse."

"What do you mean?" Goku asked.

"I mean, did he have any sickness, any feeling of pressure on his chest, a pain in his arm, that kind of thing?"

"No," Goku said, mystified.

"It came on really suddenly," I explained.  "I didn’t see any of the classic symptoms of a heart attack, but maybe he was keeping them to himself."

"He didn’t have a heart attack," Goku refuted me.  "He was electrocuted."

"What?" I asked, confused.  "When? How?"

Goku ignored me, a red flush creeping up from his collar.  He kept staring straight ahead at the doctor though and didn’t answer me.  "He was electrocuted. He was fine beforehand."

The doctor nodded.  "That makes more sense with what we’re seeing.  How was he electrocuted?"

Now Goku hesitated.  "I...dunno."

"He wasn’t electrocuted!" I insisted.  "I was right there! There wasn’t anything around for him to be electrocuted by!"

"I was closer," Goku pointed out.

"Then what zapped him?"

He shook his head, refusing to answer.  The doctor regarded us both with suspicion.

"Well.  I suppose the blood work will confirm a heart attack one way or the other.  Would you like us to call some of your family?"

"I already called my mom," Goku said.  I looked at him sharply, but he ignored it.

"Good.  It could be a long night for you all."

Not long after, Gohan started to come around again and waved feebly at us.  He was still plagued with arrythmias though. I could tell by looking at the faces of the nurse and the doctor that examined the ECG readout that it wasn’t good, but neither were they panicking.  Another nurse came to fetch us back to the nurses’ station to fill in admittance forms. They had already confirmed Gohan’s identity from his biometrics, so they had access to his medical history from the central government’s database.

I watched Goku labor over the screen, scrolling back and forth, skipping more than he answered.

"Do you want me to help?" I asked him.  I thought he would say yes - Goku didn’t really have the patience for things like forms, especially when someone he cared about was in danger.  Instead he skipped to the end and hit save. Then his eyes locked on a small camera mounted to the desk. He stood straight and looked at me, then at the nurse behind the counter.

"Hey," he said.  "Is there a vending machine around here?"

"Yes, down that corridor and to the right," he said, pointing.

Goku’s hand locked around mine, and he motored down the corridor away from the desk.  I had to jog to keep up with his determined walk.

"Wow, I’m starting to wonder if there’s anything you allow to get between you and food," I told him as he pushed us through double doors and into the corridor on the right.  But then he kept pulling me past the vending machine by the elevators.

"You’ve gone past it," I pointed out.

"Bulma," he said, sounding more serious than I think I’d ever heard him.  "I can’t eat at a time like this."

"Then where are we going?"

He answered by marching us straight out the exit at the end of the corridor.  He hurried us across the driveway outside, between two hospital buildings, out onto the busy road outside, then across that. too.

"Goku!" I said, and I could hear the fear in my voice.  "What’s going on?"

He didn’t stop until we made it to a playground bordered by houses, and then he stood, gasping for breath, trying not to cry.

"I had to get out of there," he said.

"Why?"

He shook his head again.

"Are you scared of hospitals?"

He went on shaking his head.

"Then why?"

"Yeah, I’m scared of hospitals!"

I took hold of both his arms and looked into his face, but he wouldn’t look me in the eye.

"Okay.  Don’t freak out.  I think your grandpa is going to be okay."

He snorted.

"I’m going to call your mom," I told him, remembering his odd lie in the emergency room.  As soon as I lifted my wrist to make the call he stopped me.

"No!"

"Goku, she’s got to know!"

"I know.  Let me call her.  When I get home."

"Why not now?"

"Why not later?  You said yourself that Grandpa is probably going to be okay."

Frustrated and upset, I called us a car instead.  When it stopped at his house I started to get out, but once he was on the sidewalk he blocked my exit.

"You should go back to the boarding house," he told me. 

"You don’t want to be alone at a time like this!" I exclaimed.

"I do!  Look, I’ll see you tomorrow at your thesis defending thingee dinner."

"You’ll come?" I asked, astounded.

"Grandpa can’t really stop me now, can he?" he replied bitterly.

He closed the door behind him and I watched him run up the path to his front door.  He was hiding things from me. It hurt when Gohan had, but it hurt more when Goku did.

"Where to, Miss?" asked the automatic driver.

I gave it the address, and as it drove me away again I sent two texts.  One to Gohan, asking him to call or text me immediately if he needed anything, and apologizing for leaving him there, explaining that Goku had freaked out about the hospital.  The other I sent to Gine.

_ Sorry if Goku has already told you, but I wanted to make sure you knew that your father is in Universal Hospital at this moment.  He might have been electrocuted or had a heart attack, we’re not sure, but the doctors are treating him. Goku made us leave. I don’t know what’s up with your son, but he would not let us stay at the hospital, and he won’t let me stay at home with him now.  I’m very worried about him - almost as worried about him as Gohan, and I don’t know what I can do. _

I tried to prepare for my defense that night, practice answering questions I suspected  would be asked, but my mind would not stay away from Goku and Gohan. I got a call from the hospital - apparently the admission forms hadn’t been filled out correctly, which I knew, and they had called me, as my number was on the file from the emergency call.  I had confirmed the address and was giving Goku and Gine’s name and numbers as the next of kin before I realized that there might be a reason Goku had not filled out the forms properly. For the rest of their questions I claimed not to know the answer, even if I did.  

I got two texts.  One from Gohan saying, _ All good.  Doc’s keeping me in until my heart calms down. _  The other was from Gine.  It just said,  _ Thanks for letting me know.   _ I gave in to my worry and began texting Goku.

_ Are you okay? _

_ I’m fine.  I’m not the one in hospital. _

_ Why did you make me go home?  I could be there with you. _

_ It’s okay, Bulma.  I’m okay. _

_ I’m worried about you. _

Then,  _ Did you tell my mom??? _

_ Yes!  Why didn’t YOU? _

_ It’s not your business!  She’s freaking out, She didn’t need that! _

_ She needed to know!  If you were in her position, wouldn’t you want to know? _

He didn’t answer.

...

On the morning of my defense I got up, checked my wristband for messages, and when I found none, slumped in misery.

_ I’m sorry. _  I texted.   _ You’re right - your family is not my business.  I guess I should butt out. _

I showered, checked my wristband, dressed, checked my wristband, tried to eat breakfast, checked my wristband, glanced through the pages of my thesis again, checking my wristband every couple of pages.  At lunchtime I was reduced to helpless tears of self-pity. Had I just blown up the most important friendship I had? 

_ Please say you’ll forgive me _ .  I texted him.

His reply was quick.  _  It’s okay, I forgive you already.  I guess you were trying to do the right thing.  I just been busy since last night. _

"It  _ was  _ the right thing," I said aloud, but didn’t make a message out of it to send.  The important part was that he forgave me.

...

I stepped out into the quad outside the lecture theatre, still shaking a little.

"So, how do you feel?" Professor Loaf asked me.  She had been my supervisor through this whole doctorate process.

"Wrecked," I admitted.  "I’m surprised you can stand this close to me - my armpits are Niagara Falls.  I have no idea how I came across in there."

She laughed, adjusting her spectacles.  "Forcefully. But you didn’t lose your tongue, pass out, or blank on every question, so it was far from the worst defense I’ve ever seen."

"But was it any  _ good? _ " I pleaded with her.

She nodded.  "It was good.  I probably shouldn’t say, but my feeling is that the board is going to ask for a few small revisions, and then you’ll be done."

I turned to her, taking in her pleasure at the fact.  She was  _ proud  _ of me.  It was a great feeling.

"Thank you!"

"Thank you, Bulma.  It’s been a pleasure."

A tap on the shoulder had me whirling around.  My parents stood there, beaming.

"Bulma, that was amazing!" my mother cried, bobbing a little on her four inch heels.  Her hair was immaculately curled as usual; a blonde bouffant as bold and as impractical as my mother herself.  She rushed me, planting a sticky lipstick kiss on my cheek.

"You were there?" I asked, appalled.  "I didn’t even tell you where it was!"  

My father gave a sly grin from under his grey mustache.

"It wasn’t that hard to guess, my dear," he said.  

"We just slipped in the back," my mom explained.  "We knew you didn’t want to be distracted, but we couldn’t resist."  She slipped on a pair of oversized sunglasses. "We came in disguise, see?  Your dad wore his old Cornell cap, but I made him take it off as soon as we got out - that thing has survived at least two decades past its natural life span."

"Urgh!" I objected.  "You’re so lucky I didn’t notice you!  What if you’d thrown me off and I’d made a mess of it, huh?"

"You did fine, though," my father said.  His blue eyes held that knowing gleam as always.  "I wanted to see you take your place in academia. You’re the first person in our family to get a doctorate, you know."

This was true, and I felt a prickle of regret for my father.  Maybe he regretted missing out on his doctorate all those years ago, too?  Or maybe not. It was always hard to tell with him, as outwardly he rarely showed any signs of anger or upset.

"It’s not too late for you to be the second," I pointed out.

"Ha!  That’d be a waste of time after thirty five years of actual engineering research."

"I’m Daphne Loaf," my supervisor said, reaching her hand out and reminding me that she existed.

"Oh, yes, Mom, Dad, this is Professor Loaf, my supervisor."

"Lovely to meet you at last!" my mother gushed, seizing my professor’s hand.  The corner of Dad’s mouth lifted wryly.

"Likewise," he said, taking his turn shaking Loaf’s hand.  "Sorry about my daughter’s manners."

...

Krillin looked unlike himself in a button down shirt and long pants.  I laughed at him, but he was similarly sniggering at my low heels, pencil skirt, and blouse.

"Excuse me, miss," he said as we took our seats.  "This is reserved for my friend Bulma and her family."

"Ha, ha.  Mom, Dad, this is Krillin, who I told you about."

Krillin politely got to his feet to shake their hands.  I had warned them about his height, so they wouldn’t show any shock, though I’d omitted all my suspicions about him being a genetic fugitive.

We sat, and I looked at the two empty seats.  

"When will Tights get here?"

"Oh, Tights couldn’t make it,’ my mom, said, squeezing my hand.  "She wanted to, but she couldn’t leave her assignment just now."

"Oh, what?"  I couldn’t hide the hurt I felt at that.

"She’s  _ undercover  _ right now."  Mom made a face.  "I know, I don’t like it either, and she should be here, but she said it became too dangerous.  She’s going to come visit us around Unity Day instead."

"Goku is going to come, though," I assured them.

"Really?" said Krillin.  "I thought he wasn’t allowed."

"He told me last night he was coming."  I realized that he didn’t know yet about Grandpa Gohan.  I broke the news to him, and began to feel uneasy and upset all over again as I kept looking at the door.  Krillin was shocked and upset.

"Why didn’t he tell me?" he asked.

"I don’t know.  He was acting weird to me, too.  He made me go home instead of staying with him."

"The poor kid was probably too emotional to know what to do," my mom guessed.  "Maybe he thought it would be bad for you to be thinking about things like that the day before your defense?"

"Maybe.  But it’s not like I was going to be able to blank out those hours from my memory!"

"I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t come tonight." my dad said.  "He’s probably at the hospital with his grandfather right now."

We gave the server our drink orders, and, when he came back ten minutes later for our meal orders, it started to look like my father was right - Goku wasn’t showing.  I texted him quickly while my mother admonished me for bugging him at a time like this, but I got no reply.

My mood slumped in the absence of both my best friend and my sister, even though past experience had taught me not to expect either of them at family outings.  It was hard to fault their reasons this time though, especially Goku’s. This dinner, that I had looked forward to for months, was now a bitter affair.

...

That night, Mom and Dad took me back to their house over the mountains.  It had a pool, four bedrooms (which I assume were deemed necessary for when Tights and I began producing grandbabies), a large landscaped garden with a bower walk, gazebo, and mature trees, and two paddocks, in which mom kept her pride and joy, her horse, a somewhat surly gelding called Crackers.  I was privately envious of the horse, as my parents had not been in a position to have one when I was still living at home. Now that I moved out and they had their mini mansion in the hills, they had all the toys.

Mom cooked banana pancakes for breakfast and I was still eating them when my wristband buzzed.  I checked the name that came up and then swiftly answered.

"Professor Gohan!  Are you okay?"

"I’m fine, Bulma," he replied, but to my ear his voice sounded frail.  "They sent me home from the hospital, so I must be okay."

"I guess," I said, thinking of all the stories I’d read about the hospitals turning patients out the second they could stand, and sometimes before.  I hoped he wasn’t going to bring up our argument from the other night, as I wasn’t sure what I would say if he did. Instead he said, "I’m just calling to ask if Goku is with you?"

"No.  Why?" My heart sped up in premonition.

"He wasn’t here when I got home this morning, and he’s not answering his band."

"Did you try Krillin and Master Roshi?"

"Not yet.  I’ll try them next."

"Yeah, I bet he’s at Krillin’s.  Did Goku and Gine come visit you in the hospital last night?"

There was a second of dead air on the other end, and then he replied with more concern.  "No. Did they said they would?"

Now it was my turn to catch my breath.  What did this mean?

"Goku said he was coming to my dinner last night, but he never showed up," I admitted.  "And then he didn’t answer his band for me either. I assumed that he’d gone to see you."

"No, he didn’t."

"Did you call Gine yet?"

"I can’t get hold of her."

I could hear the edge of panic in Gohan’s voice, and in my own as I answered.

"Shoot.  You’d better call Krillin and Roshi.  And then call me back when you know more, because I’m worried about him, too!"

But he didn’t call back.  I texted and called multiple times, but he didn’t answer.  Mom had me out in the paddock, teaching me how to groom Crackers, but I couldn’t keep my mind off what was going on in town.  By lunchtime I couldn’t take it anymore.

"I’m sorry, but I need to go back to the city," I told my parents over the salad that mom had made.  "I’m really worried about my friend."

They didn’t bother arguing that he was probably fine, or try to put me off in anyway.  If I was worried, they were worried. Dad ordered one of the the military cars that his lab had use of, and took me back to the city in it.  On the long drive back I told him about the fight I’d had with Gohan, and how Goku was torn between us, and about Goku’s strange behavior at the hospital.

"I was wondering if it was just his anti-government sentiment that kept your friend away from dinner last night."

"I thought you said it was probably being at the hospital?" I said, made sullen by worry.

"Neither would have surprised me."

"I don’t think he’s so much like that - not like his grandpa, anyway.  He did say he was going to come last night."

"He may have just been saying that to be polite."

"Goku doesn’t do things just to be polite.  Politeness from him is more accidental than by design."  I felt my heart glow a little with affection for him before the lightness was swallowed by worry again.

"I would really like to meet him someday.  He sounds like a unique character."

"He  _ is _ ."  

"How old is he now?"

"Sixteen."

I had been cagey about describing Goku and Krillin as friends to my parents when I was their babysitter, but I’d had to admit it eventually.  I hadn’t lied about the boys’ ages, so at some point it was going to be obvious that they didn’t need a babysitter, and I was just hanging out with younger teenaged boys for the fun of it.  I guess I felt a little shame over it, but at that moment I was too tired for shame.

"Is he really special to you, Bulma?"

I turned from the scenery flashing past the window to look my dad in the face.  His question was unusually intense. Then I realized what he was getting at.

"What?  Not that way!  Sheesh, dad!"

"Just wondering.  Sometimes, the way you talk about him-"

"Nope!"

"So you still see him like a kid?"

"No.  Not really.  When I’m with Goku...I kind of forget we’re not the same age."

He nodded.  "There’s only four years between you.  That’s not that much."

"Maybe it’s not, if we were thirty and twenty-six!" I protested, as if the same stray thought hadn’t occurred to me lately.  "Even if I forget sometimes, we’re not on the same level. We’re just  _ friends _ , Dad."

"Okay.  No boyfriends on the scene, then?"

"No," I said, more regretfully.  "This isn’t about my love life. I was trying to get to my point, which was that there’s something weird going on in that family.  I just have this feeling there are secrets they are keeping from me."

"Every family has its secrets, love.  Don’t take it personally."

...

I instructed the car to go directly to Gohan’s house.

"Can you just stay in the car a little and wait?" I asked dad, as we pulled into the street.  And then I gripped his arm tight. There was a police car parked right outside Gohan’s place.

When our car pulled up I had the door open as soon as the safety lock undid, and ran towards the open door of the house.  I could see Krillin inside, his face pale in the dim interior as he talked to a police officer. Then he saw me and rushed to the doorstep, reaching the threshold at the same time I did.

"Bulma!" he cried, throwing his arms around me, which he’d never done before, at least not without some half-jokingly lecherous intent.

"What happened?"

"Grandpa Gohan is dead!" he said, raising his face to me.

My heart stopped, and then started again.   _ At least it wasn’t Goku _ , said a horribly calm voice inside my head.

"How?"  I heard horror in my voice, but couldn’t feel it yet.

"A heart attack, I think.  I don’t know!" He had tears in his eyes - I’d never seen him cry before.  "Maybe they sent him home from the hospital too early? I found him- I found him like an hour ago."

"Where’s Goku?"  I asked.

Krillin squeezed my arms tighter, his eyes flashing wide.  " _ Gohan _ is on the back porch.  The ambulance is coming to take him away."

I was confused by the warning, but went with it anyway as the police officer that Krillin had been talking to stepped around him to stand next to us.

"I’m sorry for your loss," he said, his solid, six foot plus figure and slab-sided face radiated nothing at all, let alone sorrow.  "When you’re ready I’d like to ask a few questions."

I could hear the sound of a hoverjet coming over the hill, just like two days ago, and I felt it then, like a punch to the chest, knocking the air out of me.  I hadn’t saved the professor’s life. I’d only extended it a short time.

"I-I just talked to him on the phone, this morning," I said, and then I couldn’t talk, my throat choking up.  Krillin’s tears fell as my own welled up.

"I know!  He called me, too!"

We stood there, squeezing each other tight even as the ambulance crew had to maneuver the gurney around us.  I heard my dad talking to the officer in a low voice, but Krillin and I clung together. Gohan had become as dear to me as my own grandfather in the time that I’d known him, and it had taken me until that moment to realize it.  And Goku! Where was Goku? What would this do to him? He loved his Grandpa as much as any father. I was sure that Krillin was thinking the exact same thoughts as we sobbed together, pressing the secret worry for Goku between our hearts.  Why was he a secret? Why could we not talk of him?

At last we broke apart, reduced to sniffles; a lull in the storm.

"Miss," said the officer.  "Could I ask your name, please?"

I looked at him dully, but was distracted immediately by the ambulance crew coming back out of the front door, the one in front backing down the step.  He was followed by a gurney bearing white-shrouded feet and legs, I turned away with a cry, not wanting to see anymore of Gohan being just a body left behind.  I set Krillin off, too. We ended up on our hands and knees next to each other on the porch, wailing our grief out over the din of the ambulance hovercopter taking off again.

"I don’t think this is the right time," I heard my dad tell the officer after some time.  "Here’s her details and mine. You can call later."

Then my dad was helping me to my feet, and Krillin, too.

"Come on, Bulma, let’s go home."

"I can’t!  I can’t leave Krillin!" I protested.

"We’ll take him home, too.  Do you want a ride, son?"

As the three of us turned to go, the officer attempted to stop us.

"I still have questions for the boy."

"I’m sure you already have his name and contacts," my father said.  "The rest can wait a day or two."

He bundled us into the back of the military car, and ordered it to turn around and proceed to the next intersection.  

In the quiet of the car it was a bit easier to be calm.

"Krillin, would you like to come home with us, or back to your own home?  Or somewhere else?" my father asked.

"My own home, please."

He gave the address, and the car took the short route to Krillin’s street.

"Where’s Goku?" I managed to ask him.

"I don’t know!  You were the last person to see him."

I gave in to a fit of more weeping, fearing the worst for my friend.  "Was it really a heart attack?" I asked Krillin. 

"I really don’t know.  He didn’t look injured."

"So he wasn’t obviously, like,  _ murdered? _ "

Krillin recoiled.  Then he glanced at my dad.  "He just looked dead to me. I couldn’t see a reason for it.  Maybe they let him out of the hospital too early? Did you find out if it was a heart attack or electrocution?"

I shook my head, not bothering to point out that I hadn’t had a chance for that.

When we stopped outside of Krillin’s house he turned to me, took my hand and squeezed it for a long moment.  The look he was giving me seemed to be trying to communicate something - something intense - but this was all intense.

"Hey, Bulma, can you come inside a minute?"

"Of course."

He took me up the shady and overgrown garden to the porch, and stopped there, screened from view of the road by a bush.  I had rarely been inside Krillin’s house. I knew it smelt of incense constantly, the furniture was well-loved, and about half of the lounge was a shrine.  His parents took their religion very seriously, and had tried to interest me in it every time I had met them. They also shared the house with another highly dedicated Buddhist couple.  Goku joked that Krillin had four parents, which Krillin never seemed to find very funny.

"You can’t tell the police about Goku and his mom," he said urgently.

"Why not?"

"I don’t know much, and what I do know I can’t say."

"Krillin!  Why not? It’s me!"

"It’s not my secret to give away!"

"Do you know where Goku is then?"

"No!"  His face crumpled again.  "I think he’s gone! Him and his mom both.  I came round after the professor didn’t call me back, and the house had been like, _ turned over _ .  I was looking around trying to figure out what had happened there when I found the professor out back."  He choked off.

"Did they leave, or…?"

"Were they taken?  I don’t know that either!  I couldn’t tell in time. When I found Gohan I called an ambulance right away, but then, like, ten seconds later, the police turned up.  As if they’d been right around the corner."

The hair stood up on the back of my neck.  "A coincidence?"

"Maybe."

"This is a nightmare," I said, and he nodded in agreement.

"Wait here a minute."

He went inside for a few moments and then returned with a scrap of paper with some hand-scrawled type on it.

"What’s this?" I asked as he handed it over.

"An email address.  Just in case I never see you again."

"But you’ve got your wristband."

"In case something happens to that."

"Nothing’s going to happen, though, right?"

"Right."

I gave him another hug.  "Are your parents home?"

"Yes," he said into my shoulder.  "I’m going to tell them what happened now.  You’d better go to your dad. The meter must be ticking up on the car."

"Don’t worry, it’s a work car."

Is it only in retrospect that I imagine a flinch of his shoulders when I said that?  He pulled away.

"I gotta go."

"I’ll see you soon, though, right?"

He just waved as he slipped inside the house.

Back in the car and properly rattled now, I sat next to my dad, staring straight ahead.

"Are we going back to the house, or to your boarding house first?" he asked.

"Boarding house."

He gave the address and the car took off

"Dad, what contact details did you give to that policeman?"

"Fake ones."

I looked at him in shock.  "Why?"

"I wasn’t so sure he was a police officer."

My jaw fell open.  "Why?"

"Just a feeling.  He didn’t wear that uniform right - seemed more military to me."  He shrugged. "It’s probably just paranoia on my behalf."

_ It’s not. _

"I figured if you wanted to talk to the police, you know how to call them."

I couldn’t believe my dad would do something so...anti-authoritarian.

"Thanks, Dad."

...

I spent one more night at mom and dad’s house, then came back to start facing things.  I called Roshi on the morning I was back at the boarding house, hoping to all hell that he already knew about Gohan, because I didn’t want to have to be the one to break the news.  He did, and then he shocked me by saying that he would be organizing the funeral.

"What about Gine?  Shouldn’t she be organizing it?"

"If his daughter can be found, yes, of course.  But I can’t get hold of her, can you? The morgue is releasing...the body tomorrow.  They’ve already ruled it death by natural causes. A fatal heart arrhythmia caused by his electric shock.  The funeral home won’t hold the body for long. I’m one of the executors of his will, so I guess I have to deal."

His reedy voice was slower today, somehow conveying deep sadness and world weariness along with its usual peevishness.

"Poor Gohan."

"Poor Gohan."

The blows didn’t stop coming though.

I got a text from Krillin.  

_ I hope you kept that piece of paper.  I got to go away :/ Love you Bulma. Won’t forget you. _

Too impatient to wait for a car, I jumped on my bike and rode over to Krillin’s, arriving far sweatier and much later then if I had taken the car.  No one was home. I looked in the windows and the rooms looked half empty.

_ OMG Krillin, why?   _ I texted back, sitting curled up on the porch and crying as quietly as I could so as not to alarm the neighbors, when it felt like my heart was being torn out.

_ Where? _

_ Don’t leave me too! _

But there was no reply.  There was never a reply.

...

The funeral, four days later, was wonderful and ghastly.  It was mostly university staff and students, but also other academics, members of the Japanese community and one niece, who was fifty at the very least.  I got to hear many wonderful stories about him, but not a single person mentioned his grandson.

_ Goku doesn’t exist _ \- the thought crystallized for me.  Goku is a ghost on paper, and Gine...Gine is a fugitive of some sort.

...

The next couple of months were a blur of worry and dull depression.  I worked on my thesis revisions, but I was on auto-pilot. When I handed the thing over I watched Professor Loaf check the changes and raise her brows, but she didn’t say anything before handing it on to the committee.  It passed. I didn’t care anymore. I missed my friends, and the circumstances of their departure left me traumatized.

"Make some new friends!" my mother told me when she called to see how I was doing, as if that was the easiest thing in the world.  Like you could go down to the store and pick out a replacement.

"It’s not the lack of friends!  It’s the loss of these ones!" I snapped back at her.

"Life is like this, Bulma.  You will make friends and lose them again, and you’ll be lucky to hang on to a single one your whole life!"

"Right.  Bye Mom."  And I hung up on her, which was rude, even for me.

Also pressing on me was my total lack of direction.

"Guess I should look for a job." I told my bedroom wall at the boarding house.  This was another thing I was losing. My parents had warned me that they would no longer me paying my board now my studies were finished.  I could move back in with them while I dithered. Or I could put on my big-girl pants and find a way to support myself. I couldn’t even think of a job suitable for my skills outside of academia.  Who needed a doctor of developmental psychology? Did I want to spend the rest of my working life in universities, not even taking a break outside in the real world? Either way, I felt completely unready for true adulthood.

I tried to reconnect with the old crowd from a few years ago, met two of them for coffee and found myself with a few tentative invitations to hang out and meet the girlfriends.  My first outing with them was to a comedy show at a bar. Despite being of legal age for some months now, I hadn’t yet been in a bar - mostly because Krillin and Goku were years off being able to do so.  I hadn’t even thought about it. I went to the bar, drank beer and laughed at the jokes, and then afterwards shook with nerves as I tried to fit in to this late-twenties crowd, and the girlfriends who talked about their yoga classes, nights out, and saving money for a trip to Mexico.  One fingered a tress of my purple hair.

"This is a nice color.  But you should get it permed.  Curls on you would just look adorable!  Don’t you think, Triss?"

"Like Shirley Temple," the other girl agreed.  "Oh, we should take her to the salon sometime, and do her nails too.  I can give you  _ so  _ many makeup tips."

I walked home that night, as it wasn’t far, feeling somehow less good about myself than I had when I got there.  The two pints I’d had took the edge off though, and I seemed to be slightly floating home. Other people exited the bar at the same time I did, and funneled away down the streets together.  

When I headed into the park that I cut across, I noticed that there was someone behind me.  I didn’t think anything of people walking behind me on the street, but my instincts bridled against crossing the grassy, tree-shaded park at night if there was someone following me.  I knew my mom would be beside herself if she knew I  _ ever  _ crossed the park at night.  I was reasonably certain that mom had never walked further than the waiting car during darkness hours in her whole life.  

I turned a right angle and began making for the street again, grinning at my foolishness.  I looked across at the person who had been following me, expecting to see them continue on across the park, but they didn’t.  They stopped still and looked back at me. He was tall. Muscular looking under his black tee. And his face was inscrutable under the brim of a baseball cap.  I took in this fleeting impression of danger for just a second, and then I turned and walked as fast as I could, almost running, for the street.

I made it to the street and crossed the road to walk under the streetlights.  Looking back every so often, I jogged down the street, knowing I would have to go right around the park now.  By the time I got to the corner, I had calmed down. He hadn’t followed me out of the park. I turned down the road that would take me past the West side of the park, and was in view of my street when I saw movement from the corner of my eye - the same guy was stepping out of the tree shade.  This time I did run - I took off like a scalded cat up to my street, then down the row of glass-lobbied buildings to mine. The door unlocked for me the second I reached it and the door handle validated my fingerprints. I was inside in seconds, closing the door behind me, looking back through the glass.  No one was behind me. I went up to the glass and pressed my face to it to see if I could see the man still on his way, but I couldn’t, and I realized that, if he was the crazy person I feared he was, he might have a gun or other weapon that could harm me through the glass. I retreated to the stairwell and crouched in the shadows, taking cover behind one of my fellow boarder’s hoodies that had been left hanging from the balustrade.  No one came up to the door, though.

_ I don’t even know if he was following me _ , I realized.   _ It was probably a coincidence that he was taking the same route through the park as I do _ .

Feeling calmer, I went upstairs to where I could hear some excited young voices.

In the kitchen Tolly, another boarder, was manning the toaster while her friend and her friend’s boyfriend and two other people I’d never seen before watched.  They were all drinking rum and coke by the smell of it. I frowned.

"Hi, Bulma!" Tolly sang in an overly-cheery manner.  "It’s not a party, I swear! These guys just swung by, and as soon as I’ve had some peanut butter on toast we’re all going out.  That’s okay, right?"

"Yeah, sure," I said, doubtfully.  As I was now the oldest and longest-staying boarder in the house, Mrs Perez left me as proxy-in-charge on occasions, like tonight, when she wasn’t home; a responsibility I did not really enjoy.  Parties and sleepovers were definitely not allowed in Mrs Perez’s clean, orderly, and respectable household, which left me playing fun police to the younger tenants.

"Do you want some toast?" she asked.

No wonder Tolly’s parents had set her up in a boarding house - left to her own devices she’d eat nothing but toast and popcorn.

"I’m good."

I went to my bedroom and looked around at my half-filled boxes.  Just four more days left on my rent. I wasn’t sure what to pack up already, what to throw out, and what to leave till the last minute.  My desk alone would take a whole day to sort through the strata of notes, texts, and datasheets that may or may not be garbage. I sat down at the desk and immediately slumped till my head was in my hands.  I had come to the end of something, and right now I couldn’t see anything exciting in the future, or anyway to go forward. Perhaps I should just take some time off while I stayed at my parents’ house? Think of some careers I could pursue, or apply for a grant.  

Even the thought of conducting my own studies didn’t excite me.  I just missed Goku and Krillin. My triumph was ashes in my mouth.

There was a knock on the door.

"What is it?"

Tolly stuck her head in.  "We’re going to go dancing.  Do you want to come?"

"It’s nearly eleven," I pointed out. 

She snorted.  "What’re you, like forty years old?  The dance floors don’t even fill up until after eleven!"

"No thanks."

"Are you sure?  You’re going to be the only one home tonight."

"Good.  I can finally watch what I want on the lounge wall panel."

"Okay, suit yourself."

Her group gathered itself and rumbled downstairs with a lot of fuss, whooping, and laughter.  I felt a familiar needle of envy. I was somehow simultaneously too young and too old for horsing around drunk with my friends and going out dancing at eleven at night.  Maybe I  _ should  _ go with them?  Maybe through proximity I could learn the trick of carefree hedonism.

Instead I sloped back to the kitchen, planning on making hot chocolate and watching something distracting on the wall panel.  Someone ran back up the stairs behind me.

"Did you forget something?" I asked.

When Tolly didn’t answer, I turned and found myself eye-to-chest with someone who was not Tolly at all.  Hands clamped around my arms as I looked up, my scream getting stuck in my throat, as this tall stranger in a tight black tee glared at me with dark eyes from under a cheap looking baseball cap.

"Don’t make a sound," he said.

I couldn’t, but my body lurched to action, trying to pull desperately away, then when he wouldn’t release me, kicking at his shins with my sneakers, then trying to force my hands up to rake his face, but, though I jerked him around, his grip was way too strong.  He marched me backwards into the lounge until the back of my knees hit the sofa and I collapsed on it. Imagining my brutal rape and brutal murder, I finally managed a scream. He let go of one of my wrists to shove against my mouth, pressing my head back into the sofa cushions, and I used my now-free hand to go for his eyes.  He reared back just in time, and my fingernail scored a deep tear down his cheek that made me feel sick.

"Ah!  Fuck!" he roared, trying to keep his face away from my second attempt.  His hat bounced free and long, wild spikes of hair sprang out, framing his face in a way I found suddenly eerily familiar.

"Goku?" I said, feeling foolish.  Goku would never attack me like this.  And he was tall and strongly built for his age, but not this tall or buff.  His face was older, more tanned, and right now was dripping blood down one cheek onto the upholstery.

"Not Goku," the man said.  "Would you stop fighting me?"

"Why should I?  I don’t know who the hell are you are!"

"I’ll tell you my name when I think you deserve to be trusted with it," he said.

I eyed his hair again, and the dark brown eyes.  He looked so much like Goku. He could be his older brother, or father even.

"Do you know who Goku is?" I asked.

"I’ll ask the questions, Bulma Briefs."

...

_ "Bardock.  It was just like the time on the bus.  With Vegeta and the hair, stuffed under his hat." _

_ The room span.  I felt sick. _

_ "And then he asked Goku… I mean Bardock.  Asked… Said he’d seen Bardock. Said he’d talked him.  Vegeta..." _

_ My train of thought no longer made sense.  It had smashed into an oncoming express and was a jumbled wreck of memories and faces, and I needed to close my eyes on the spinning room. _

_ "I want to stop," I said.  My arms felt like lead weights, and when I tried to stand nothing happened. _

_ "There is no stopping, Miss Briefs.  Only telling." _


	4. Cornell - 2144

**CHAPTER FOUR: CORNELL 2144**

 

I pushed him back into the edge of the seat by his shoulders, then grabbed his chin, tilting his head back towards the light.  He frowned, but didn’t fight me, realizing what I was doing. There, in his irises were the marks. Two flecks of gold in his right iris at one o’clock and nine o’clock, and just one in his left iris at the two o’clock position.  It was really him.

“Vegeta Tarble Two!” I whispered, and he nodded.  It didn’t make any difference - I was still not able to get my head around it.  I let go of his chin, realizing I was still touching him. The man I’d thought was stalking me, the man who had taken down three goons, was  _ Vegeta _ .

“How are you here?  I mean...did you  _ escape? _ ”

‘Shush,’ he said, inclining his head slightly to the side, though he was clearly amused at the question.  I supposed it was a little bit of a dumb one. I looked across the aisle and saw the girl watching us, and a couple straining over the top of their seat to see better.  

He clambered up into the seat, and hooked a hand under my arm to drag me after him.  I felt exposed with my head above the edge of the window, but he obviously figured we were far enough away from our pursuers.

“Are you okay?” asked the girl from across the aisle.  She looked like a first year student, and a little scared.  “Do you need to go to the hospital? Because you’re on the wrong bus.”

“We’re fine,” I assured her, even though I sure I didn’t feel it.

“Your nose is bleeding,” she pointed out.

I touched my gloved hand to my lip, and it came away red.  Amid the pain I hadn’t noticed the wet feeling.

“Oh, shit.”

“Here,” she said, reaching into her bag and coming out with some crumpled facial tissues.  Everyone on the bus was watching us by that point.

“Thank you!”

“No problem.”

Vegeta took the tissues and handed them to me, and as I pressed them to my nose I could feel I was shaking, and my nose and chin were starting to hurt properly.  I wiped the blood from my upper lip, then held my nose in the tissues to stem the flow.

“I think I broke my nose,” I whispered to him, tears coming into my eyes more at the idea than the pain.

He looked me gravely between the eyes, then reached out and tweaked the bridge of my nose.  “Did that hurt?”

“Not really.”

“That’s not broken.  Don’t worry.”

Looking into his eyes I felt so dislocated.  I hadn’t seen him in eleven years, and it was almost as if a stranger sat next to me.  He was both familiar and new, and I guess I hadn’t known him for long back then, but I had never pictured him as capable of violence.  I guessed that a lot could change in eleven years. 

“Hey,” he asked, his voice low.  “Where can we go? Somewhere we can talk?”

“This bus goes past my apartment.”

His eyes widened slightly.  “Somewhere  _ safe _ ,” he added.

My heart fell and my fear increased.  Every bit of me longed to make it back to my refuge of an apartment, but if he was being followed - correction, if  _ I  _ was being followed, and they knew my real name, then they almost certainly knew where I lived.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m not stupid enough to try it.”

I checked the tissue, and the blood seemed to have slowed.  “I’m just going to make a call.”

“To who?”

“To my house.”  Lifting my wristband I said, “Call Watson.”

The call took a second to connect, and then I could hear Watson’s English tones through the clip on my ear.

“Good evening, Miss Pincher,  I assume that is you?”

“Hey, Watson, has anyone been inside the apartment tonight since I left?”

“Yes.  Several visitors came by.  They appeared to have a key.  I asked if I should call you, or if they would like to wait, and they declined, but they did install a hot patch on the home butler system-”

“Fuck!”  I squeezed the band to end the call so hastily that I missed the first time and had to try again.

“What?” Vegeta inquired.

“They’ve been there!”  All my stuff; my nice, safe, rickety, old apartment was now barred from me.  Then I put another call through to Watson. “Watson, restore to factory settings.  Delete all personal data, plugins, apps, and patches.”

“I’m afraid doing so is irreversible.  All personalization of the home butler system will be lost.”

“I know.  Do it.”

“I will require a passphrase.”

“Margarita, mitochondria, Maldives.”

“Initializing factory reset.”

“Where else can we go?” Vegeta asked while I was still listening for confirmation of the reset.

“I don’t know.”  My mind flew to my sister, but that was all that was flying to her.  I didn’t have money for a plane ride, and even if Vegeta did, an airport was a very good place for a wanted person to get picked up if these guys had that kind of power.  Though the SSA was a single entity, it still had internal border control so it could control and track the population. Bolivia was far down the list of desired states to live and work - easy to get into, but hard to get out of unless you were a resident in another state.  However it didn’t matter where we went, airports were out of the question.

Closer by… My lack of true friends was apparent.  Tien was the closest, and was also out of the question.

“Factory reset complete,” said a voice in my ear in Standard North American Female vocals.  “Log in again to initialize butler program.”

I hung up.  I wondered when I would next get to step foot in my apartment.  I had a lecture to give tomorrow and I still wasn’t prepared.  _ What an odd thing to be concerned about at a time like this _ , part of me observed.

“I know where,” I told Vegeta.  I looked out the window, seeing where we were.  “We need to get off the bus.”

...

The car I called pulled into the arc of the driveway of the Bioengineering building and stopped right outside the front steps.

“Looks clear,” I said, peering into the shadow of the porch.  “I didn’t see anyone staking out the place - did you?”

‘No.  But I’m still not I convinced that this is safe either,” Vegeta said.

“This lab is very secure,” I told him.

“How do you know they’re not waiting inside?”

Good question.  I really wanted them to not be.  There were things I wanted inside - extra clothes, a familiar space, and a sense of safety.  Irrational, I knew. I turned to Vegeta, his face visible only from the glow of the instruments on the dashboard.

“Who are these people following us?  Are they the kind that could get a warrant to search a lab?  What probable cause would they have?”

“They’re the kind that don’t need probable cause or warrants.”

“Who?”

He shrugged.  “Maybe military police.  Maybe Special Reconnaissance.”

My stomach tightened at that.  Special Reconnaissance was a nice euphemism for the SSA’s interior intelligence and black ops, ie. spies and assassins deployed in the homeland.  That was the rumor, anyway.

“Well, I’d like to see them get in without  _ someone’s  _ permission.  This lab is full of sensitive research.”  It was rather ironic, really. The SSA funded the university and the research and ordered that certain research be kept secure, and that might actually be enough to keep the SSA’s black ops out at least in the short term.  “Besides - we won’t stay long. We’ll be gone by morning.”

He didn’t look happy, but he opened the door on his side of the car and ran around it while I got out my side and hurried up the steps.  In the shadow of the porch, metal shutters covered the two doors.

“Stick close behind me,” I told Vegeta.  “Technically I’m not allowed to bring anyone inside that’s not authorized.  I don’t want the door sensors realizing we’re more than one person.”

He stepped in close to my back and held my shoulders while I waved my wristband in front of the sensor pad on the porch wall.  The biometric scanner above lit up. 

“Step to the scanner, please,” asked the smartdoor.  I did so, Vegeta half a step behind me as I leaned forward and placed my face in the oval portal of the scanner.  There was a brief flash of red light as my biometrics were read and then the door asked me for my name and password.

“Bulma Pincher, Salt Taffy.”

The door thought about this one for a second.  “Access granted. Good evening, Miss Pincher.”

The metal shutter slid open on the door closest, and behind it the wooden door swung open.  I stepped inside slowly, giving Vegeta the chance to follow my movements, and shuffled a few steps into the lobby as the door closed behind us.

“We’re good now,” I whispered.  “I don’t think there are any sensors inside the building.” 

He stepped to my side and looked around the large lobby.  It was a picture of grandeur and neglect - crumbling plaster cornices and cracked polished concrete.  This building was over a hundred years old, and built to mesh with a style a hundred years older than that.  I guessed it had been refurbished at some point, but it badly needed more work. At least the labs themselves weren’t shabby.  

Corridors led in either direction from the lobby, ahead was the double doors to the undergraduate labs, and stairways peeled off in either direction to the upper floors.  They were all in darkness - our entrance had only triggered the lights in the lobby to turn on. For the first time ever, I felt a little threatened in my building.

“I guess no one has been here recently, or else the lights would still be on.  They’re motion sensing, and take about an hour to shut off.”

He nodded in silent acknowledgement.  

I led the way up the staircase to the left, our footsteps on the concrete treads echoing off the hard walls, and the lights flickering on ahead of us.  On the third floor we stepped out onto the thick carpet that made this part of the building more homely, and I hurried us down the corridor to my office.  Inside, everything looked as I had last seen it - my desk jammed back to back with my officemate’s, and a narrow sofa taking up most of the rest of the room.  I flicked the lights off again at the wall, letting the office be lit from the street lamp outside. No need to advertise we were in.

Feeling more assured, I took off my coat and tossed it on the sofa.  It was thermacore lined, and with the high, faux fur collar it was already starting to make me overheat.

Hesitantly, like he wasn’t sure of what to do, Vegeta took off his own coat and jacket, put them on the sofa, and looked at me like he was checking he was doing the right thing.  Then he stepped further inside, looking all around the room in curiosity. He looked like a cat checking out a new house - exactly how he had been when I had shown him my house in Victorville.

_ He really  _ is  _ him _ , I thought to myself.   _ This is so strange! _

Then I caught my reflection in the window.

“I’m going to clean myself up,” I told him.  

He glanced back at me.  “Okay.”

Further down the corridor I ducked into the ladies’ room.  Once I’d wiped the dried blood off my nose and upper lip, my reflection in the mirror didn’t look quite so frightful.  My nose was a bit pink, but that could have been the cold, and I was going to have a bruise on my chin. Mostly I looked pale and scared.  Then I remembered that it was Vegeta outside waiting for me, and I watched my grin transform my face.

“Holy crap!” I said, and couldn’t help dancing on the spot.  How had he gotten here? I had to know!

As I headed back down the corridor, a sound from the kitchenette made me leap in terror before freezing on the spot.  The light was on, and I saw someone’s shadow moving across the doorway.

“Vegeta, is that you?”

“Yes,” he said.  When I hurried to the door, he added, “I’m not sure what that question would have achieved if it wasn’t me.”

And that was  _ not  _ so like the Vegeta I remembered.  He was older though - I couldn’t expect him to be entirely the same person.  I stopped short in the doorway. He had been going through the bare cupboards of the kitchen.

“Are you hungry or something?”  Of course he was. He was a Saiyan.

“A bit.”

“Wait here a minute.”

I zipped to my office and returned with a few precious supplies.  He looked at me quizzically as I placed the tin on the short kitchen counter and reached up into the open cupboard to get some mugs down.

“What’s got you so happy?” he asked.

I tried to squash the smile, to no avail.  “I’m just so happy you’re free, and here!”

“For now.  But not for much longer if these goons on our tail catch up with us.”

“Well, no, of course. ”  I went about adding the powder to the cups and mixing in boiling water from the wall unit with my back to him, trying to rein in my foolish joy.  Maybe this wasn’t the right time for a joyous reunion - I had just been attacked in a car park, after all, and Vegeta didn’t seem to be feeling the joy.  Whatever path had brought him here, it probably wasn’t easy. 

I topped up each mug with milk from the fridge and handed him one.  He watched me sip mine and then tried his own. A frown flashed across his face.

“Is it no good?” I asked.  I sipped my own. It was okay.  “It’s only supermarket stuff.”

“I’m sure it’s fine.  I was just expecting coffee, not hot chocolate.”

“Maybe I should have asked, but hot chocolate is your favorite.”

The expression on his face was somewhere in the vicinity of appalled.  Maybe not.

“I haven’t had any for a long time.”  He took another sip with a barely suppressed grimace.

And eleven years  _ was  _ a long time.  Of course he had changed in that time.  Physically he had changed - without his coat on, I could see the way his thick navy hoodie clung to his chest and shoulders.  Whatever Vegeta had been doing with his time since I last saw him, intense physical activity seemed to have been part of it. His hairline had receded a little at the temples, leaving his widow’s peak more noticable.  The man inside must have changed at least that much. I shouldn’t have assumed he still liked the same things.

“Don’t drink it if you don’t want it.  There’s coffee, too.”

“This is fine.”

“I guess I should have asked, but… I remembered what you said that first time I brought you a hot chocolate from the canteen.  Do you remember?”

He looked down at his cup.  “I don't remember a lot of things from around that time.”

The last of my lifted spirit evaporated. “Really?  What do you remember?”

“You.  Your name, and what you did for me.  Bits and pieces of the escape… That's all, really.”

This alarmed me.

“How come?  I mean I know it was eleven years ago, but…”

He shook his head and took a seat on one of the chairs at the plastic topped table against the wall.  “The interrogation and the reconditioning they put me through. That whole part of my life is kind of a blur.”

“Oh.”  That was appalling, but I wasn't quite sure what to say about it.  Suddenly my two years in prison didn’t seem so bad. “I’m sorry they did that to you.”

He shrugged.  “I’m fine, now.  You can’t miss what you don’t remember.”

But I remembered, and the thought of that Vegeta being tortured and erased from his own memory made a lump come to my throat.

I twisted the top off the other jar and offered it to him.

“Cookies?”

He slowly took one.

“Have as many as you like,” I prompted him.  He looked at me with something I could only interpret as suspicion.

“What about you?” 

I took one out and took a bite out of it.  “This’ll do me,” I said around my mouthful.  He took four. I turned away, feeling grief and pity for him, but even the Vegeta I used to know wouldn't have appreciated that.  Whatever they'd done to him, they’d changed him. He didn't trust me. He had used to. Well, perhaps he had good reason to have revoked that trust, given the way we’d been parted.

“Let’s go back to my office, it’s more comfortable there.”

We carried our drinks and cookies back to the office and sat side by side on the sofa.  Comfortable, but not less awkward. He demolished a cookie and started on his second.

“I do like these,” he said, with the barest hint of a smile.

“Salted chocolate chip.  “They’re my fav-” I suddenly got caught on the lump in my throat.  “-orite,” I croaked out. Tears were misting my eyes. Damn.

“What’s wrong?”

I waved my hand, trying to smile away the tears that were threatening.  “Nothing. I’m just so damn glad to see you! I never thought I’d see you again!”

He was silent for a moment.  “Did you really miss me that much?”

“Vegeta!  I thought you might be dead!”  That exclamation was too much, and the tears couldn’t be held back any longer.  I put my hot chocolate down on the desk opposite, not wanting to spill it if I was going to start sobbing.  

He slid forward in the seat next to me.  “I’m okay though.”

“Yeah.  I just - I thought I had made your life worse than it needed to be, because of what I did!”

“You didn’t though.  I don’t think my life would have turned out any different if you hadn’t come into it, but I don’t think I’d be free now if you hadn’t, so I’m glad you did.”

I looked at him and his earnest expression took me right back to those days.

“I’m glad you think so,” I said, and leaned in to hug him.  I remembered the bony shoulders and narrow back, but that’s not what I encountered now.  He was solid and warm and muscular, and stiff as a board in my arms. He pulled back, leaning away from me, and I let go of him.

“Sorry,” I said, standing up.  “I guess that wasn’t appropriate, especially when you barely remember me.”

I took a seat on my office chair, pretending I didn’t notice my blush of embarrassment or his stunned expression.  Then he shifted uncomfortably and looked around the room. Anywhere but me.

“So...um...what happened to you after they captured us?” he asked.

“I went to prison for two years.”  Oh, the bitterness never really left.  “I’m still on parole. But how are you here?  Did you escape from Illuminary Inc? Or Barstow?  Or somewhere else?”

“Barstow,” he said leadenly.  “Weapons Research Unit.”

“So they did make you a soldier?”

“They did.  And I was.”

“Was it bad?  I remember what Bardock told me.”

He shrugged. “It was what it was.  It was Bardock was who helped me escape.”

“Bardock’s still  _ alive? _ ”  That was almost too good to be true!

“Well, he was a few months ago - I don’t know about now.”

“What happened?”

“He sprang me out of the WRU in a similar way that he escaped.  As soon as I was loose I was meant to meet up with him. He had a lead on Radishya and the family and was going to take me to them, but he never showed up.”  Vegeta clenched his fists. Even though his voice was calm, I wondered if it was costing him a lot to keep it that way.

‘Oh no, Bardock!”  Guilt surged in me anew.  He’d been out there all this time, and I hadn’t found him!  I’d barely looked - I had been almost certain he was a goner.  And now I find out I was wrong, but too late! I felt sick. “How long ago was this?’

“Three months.  I couldn’t find any trace of him in all that time.  I hung around Las Vegas for a week in case he showed up, but I couldn’t stay any longer.  I started to feel like I was being followed, so I ran.”

“Where to?”

He looked me straight in the eye.  “To you. You’re the only other person I could think of on the outside.”

I was responsible for him knowing anyone on the outside.  In a way, I supposed that made me responsible for him even attempting to escape, both times.  And he knew no one else. I was still responsible. 

“How did you find me?”

He reached into the pocket of his coat lying next to him and pulled out the black, generic looking wristband.  “Bardock told me that if anything went wrong, I should go to a certain street-hacker in Los Vegas. He already had this hacked wristband waiting for me.”

“Hacked wristband?  How does that work?”  I hadn’t heard of hacking a wristband before.  They were supposed to be unhackable.. They were an essential accessory for modern existence, but buying and getting an account for one was a big deal, no matter which company you went with.  And the government was rumored to have access to all the data related to every band user. I slid my fingers under my own, thinking about the liability it could be.

“It spoofs a new, random identity every two hours,” Vegeta said, “so purchases can’t be tracked.  It’s only loaded with e-cash though. I can’t add accounts to it. Not that I have any accounts.”

“Where did you get the cash from?”

He looked surprised at that question, and then sat back, giving me a grim smile.  “I don’t think you want to know.”

I instantly regretted asking.  He was wrong, I did want to know, but I wasn’t going to ask if he was challenging me like that.  Possibilities flitted across my mind - day labor like litter picking or sewage farm rakers? They paid peanuts, but they’d take anyone, no questions asked.  It was the last stop of the desperate. Or worse? Theft? Robbery? Prostitution? I shirked away from thinking of Vegeta doing any of that. He’d been quite innocent when I had last known him.

“Alright.  What does the hacker have to do with it?  Did he find me for you?”

“He did.  That was the easy part.”

I wasn’t too surprised.  I was officially enrolled here under my real name, but I used Pincher, my mother’s maiden name, for all my interactions.  It was only really to stop people connecting me, the bio-engineering masters student, to me, the disgraced young psychologist whose story was dragged through the headlines ten years ago.   _ That pedo doctor _ .  I clenched my teeth in rage at the memory before tamping it down again.  I’d looked into faking a whole new identity after I got out of prison, but as far as my inquiries suggested, it was next to impossible, and dangerous to even try.  With the choice of suffering the label of sex offender the rest of my life or looking over my shoulder for the police or government officials the rest of my life, I had gone with the known evil.

“It took most of the three months to work my way across the country,” he was saying.  “It’s a long way when you’re trying to evade detection and still learning how everything works.”

“I bet.  Jeez, that must’ve been hard.  I’m glad you made it though.”

His eyebrows flashed up.  “Are you sure? Because I don’t know if those guys just happened to be following you, or if they’re here because they figured out where I was heading.”

I shuddered slightly.  “I’m still glad,” I said.  “Because now you’ve found me, I can help you.  What do you need?”

His eyes narrowed slightly, and he pushed forward to the edge of the seat again, leaning across the short gap to my chair.

“I want to get to Radishya and the others.  Do you know where they are?”

Of all the terrible timing…

“What’s wrong?” he asked as I put my face in my hands.

“Oh fu....fudgesticks.”

“Do you not know?”

I looked up again.  “No.”

His face fell.

“I had a way to get in contact with them - an anonymous email address - but I had to delete the account tonight.  Radishya said that they were compromised and were on the move again. She told me, or all her contacts I guess, to delete the message and close their accounts.  She’s probably already closed hers on her end.”

“Shit!”  He sat straight, and then stood up to pace the length of the small office.  “Do you know anyone else who might?”

“Not that I can think of, I’m sorry.”

He stopped in front of the casement window by my neighbor’s desk.  I felt his disappointment. In a way I was responsible for that, too, as I was the one who had originally sold him on the idea of joining the family.  He wouldn’t have known about them otherwise.

“What will you do?” I asked him.  A cruel question, I realized after I asked it.  He had come to me seeking his family, and he had nothing and no one else.  How could he have a plan B?

“I don’t know.”  He looked so unhappy, staring out the window.

“Don’t worry.  We’ll figure something out.”

I wasn’t connected to anyone else that knew Radishya - the only one had been Bardock, and only through him to anyone else, and they were far away.

“Wait - I know where we might be able to find out where they’ve gone,” I said.

Vegeta was instantly alert.  “Where? Can we go now?”

I thought about it.  “No. We’ll need to set out in the morning.  I don’t have the money for an extended car journey.  Do you?”

He looked at the band in his hand.  “Probably not.”

“Well, I hope you have enough for a train ticket at least.  I don’t think the first train leaves Syracuse until about eight A.M.  We should get some sleep while we can.”

“Hmm.”  He leaned forward and looked more pointedly out of the window.

“Do you see something out there?”

“No.  But I don’t like the thought of sticking around here too long.”  Then he reached for the window latch and tried to raise it. It didn’t budge.

“You need an authorized wristband to open the windows,” I told him.

“Really?”

“Yeah, and the glass is shatterproof and bulletproof.”

He looked over at me in surprise.  “What goes on in here?”

“Government funded science.  I told you it was secure.”

I finished the last of my hot chocolate and rummaged in my drawer for the toothbrush and toothpaste mints I kept there.  “Do you want the couch?” I offered valiantly. Perhaps he could hear the bravado in my voice.

“I’ll take the floor.  It’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

He tamped the carpet with the toe of his boot.  “I’ve had worse accommodations, especially lately.”

“Well.  Knock yourself out.  You can have first dibs on my toothbrush if you need one.”

He cringed.

“Yeah, gross,” I agreed.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” he said, and took the tabs and brush from me.

...

Ten minutes later we were settling in under our coats I remembered how I had caught him loitering on my next-door neighbor’s porch.  “Vegeta, why were you following me this evening?” I asked. “Why didn’t you just knock on my door and say hello.”

“First, to be sure it was you,” he said from the floor next to me.  “And second, to see if you were being followed or watched. Which you were.”

My fear from earlier returned.  The temporary haven provided by the familiar lab seemed a weaker talisman suddenly.

“Why do you think they were following me?”

“Like I said, they might have guessed where I was headed when I left Las Vegas.  But you said Radishya said they’d been compromised - it could be that the government is rounding up everyone associated with the Saiyans.”

“Maybe.”  My heart was pounding in my chest.  I realized that I wouldn’t be teaching my lecture tomorrow.  I wondered when I would be able to return to this place. Or if I ever would.  My pieced together life, about to be blown apart again.

...

I slept eventually, but woke some hours later to the sound of breathing and another more subtle whisper on the verge of hearing.  I had pulled the blind on one window, but the other was jammed open, letting in the streetlight, and snow was falling, brushing up against the pane in flurries.  It was still dark outside. I checked my wristband - 5.30am. Probably best not to linger much longer.

I leaned over the side of the couch and looked down at Vegeta, wondering if I should wake him.  He was asleep on his back, his head pillowed on his folded hoodie, one arm sprawled out from under his coat and the other curled on top of it.  His face by the lamplight was smooth in sleep. I found myself watching him instead of waking him. 

I could see the boy he had once been in him, but there was nothing boyish about him now.  His short sleeved shirt revealed an arm corded with muscle, and his neck and shoulders were thick with it.  Even on his face there seemed to be not a hint of softness, except maybe his lips. I worked it out - he must be twenty five, but he looked older.  I’d have believed thirty or thirty five. His dark brows were thicker. The pointed jawline of his youth had widened. He looked altogether more solid, more...I wasn’t sure what.

_ Hot. _

I banished that thought immediately to the basement of my brain.  That was just not appropriate thinking. He’d come to me now in a state that was really no less vulnerable than when he’d been my patient, and he’d come for help, not to get ogled by me.  I was about to look away when I spied something odd about the arm that lay curled on top of his coat. His wrist was deformed. 

Looking closer, I could see it was like a raised lump of skin with a suspiciously geometric shape, almost like a wristband, but under the skin.  The dark line on the top of the wrist looked for all the world like a  _ dataport _ .  I felt sick looking at it.  What kind of life had he had?  Sure, prison had been no picnic, but it had also been relatively safe, and afterwards I’d spent four years feeling sorry for myself in Mexico, doing nothing useful, and he’d essentially been in prison this whole time, having his mind fucked up and things implanted in him, and who knew what else.

...

I woke him up a short time later with a cup of the machine coffee from downstairs.  As a sometimes-barista, I hated to say it, but it was decent stuff. Machines could be programmed to create a consistently good cup, but human-staffed cafes were still not going out of fashion.  Robot servers didn’t make for great ambience.

“Vegeta.”

His eyes shot open.  Then he sat up, looking around, eyes darting to the door, then the windows.  I wouldn’t have thought his spikes of black hair could look more wild and shocked than usual, but somehow they did.

“Everything’s fine,” I told him, hoping it was true.  “Coffee?”

“Hmm.”  He took it, and took a sip, rising from the floor.

“No food, sorry, but I could get something from the vending machine if you can’t wait for something more substantial.”

“You shouldn’t pay for anything with that wristband,” he pointed out.  “I’m sure they must be tracking any spending you’re doing with it.”

“I know.  But they probably already know we’re here.”  I took the wristband off. The skin underneath was paler and shiny from being covered with the silicon practically permanently.  My link to the Super States Web. The thought of doing without it made me feel more than slightly anxious. I put it back on. I needed it at least until we got off the Cornell Campus.

“Hey, I was going to ask you about that thing on  _ your  _ wrist,” I said.  

“What thing?”

“The thing that looks like a wristband embedded in your skin.”

He glanced down.

“What is it?”

“Just a monitoring device.”

“For what?”

“For me.  I don’t know.  They collect data off it and sometimes change the program on it.  Just biometric data I think.”

“Could they be tracking you with it?  Do you know if it puts out any kind of signal?”

“I don’t know.  But it’s not like I can take it off.”

I had my own thoughts on that.  It looked pretty close to the surface, and I knew a PhD student doing trials on medical implants.  Their lab was stocked with scalpels, local anesthetic, and synthi-skin. It would be messy, but definitely possible.

“There’s a CAT scanner in one of the labs.  I think I should at least take a quick look to see if I can work out what it might be used for.”

He pulled his hoodie back on.  “I don’t know that we have time for that.”  He stalked over to the window and looked out.  He flinched.

“They’re out there!”

“I know,” I said.  I had seen the car parked a short way down the street when I had checked before.  “They’ve been out there for a little while at least. But they haven’t come in. I think they’re waiting for us to come out, but that’s okay.  We’re not going out the same way we got in. And if they have to wait for someone to let them in, they’ll be waiting another hour at least. Come on, bring your coffee.”

The CAT scanner in the upstairs lab was small - designed for using on lab rats, but a good size for someone’s wrist.  I wedged Vegeta’s forearm in place and then went out to the little control booth and started it up, leaving him in the darkened room.  It didn’t take long, and then the data was pouring in, forming a 3D image on the screen before me. I took a brief look and swore.

“Vegeta, you can get up now.”

He was at my side in a moment.  “What did you find?”

I showed him, and saw the shock register on his face.  “That band, whatever it does, is shackled  _ between  _ the radius and ulna bones.”

“Fuck,” he whispered, looking more disgusted than anything.

“I was going to suggest maybe we had time to whip that thing out, but this would require full-on surgery.  Whatever it is, the WRU didn’t want it to come off.”

“So we leave it on?”

“I guess.”  My brain was already knocking on the door with a suggestion.  “But maybe we can disable it. Come on, follow me out to my lab,”

I took him out into the corridor and several doors down to the lab I shared with the other masters students.  My work area was full of gel suspended lab-grown nerves. They were all cultured from various animals including humans, and I was tweaking the DNA of each generation of the culture to see if I could increase conductivity to mimic a Saiyan’s nerve.  It would have been easier to start with some Saiyan tissue, but that particular application had been met with a firm “no”, unsurprisingly.

I turned on the task light over a clear piece of the bench, put on my protective gloves and took down my needle-fine electrodes and held them in front of him.

“What are you going to do?” he asked, eyeing them.

“You’re a Saiyan, right?”  I grinned. “That thing in your wrist must be shielded from the electricity in your body.  But it’s got a port, and I doubt that it’s shielded from the outside. Or if it is, there’s probably a limit.  Don’t worry - I’ll go slow. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You were just talking about cutting my wrist open before.”

“I’d have been careful.”

He narrowed his eyes.  “Were you always this...reckless?”

“This isn’t recklessness.  It’s caution. And yes, I  _ was _ .  You were there.  Now, are you okay with this?”

Reluctantly he laid his wrist on the bench.  “Do what you will.”

“I’m not going to hike it to eleven straight away,” I said.  “Just high enough that it fries. If it starts to hurt for any reason, say something.”

I placed the electrodes into either end of the dataport.  The monitor immediately showed the resistance of the item and the voltage and amperes already flowing through it - very low, but present.  I got him to hold one of the electrodes in place, then I kicked off with a conservative ten milliamps. When Vegeta didn’t react, I began clicking up the scale in ten milliamp degrees.  I was soon past one hundred milliamps, enough to kill a normal human, and yet the device was still alive when I checked. I clicked up to two hundred milliamps, then three, five, eight. This thing  _ was  _ shielded!

“Dammit, I hope it doesn’t take much more - my unit only goes to one ampere!  How do you feel?”

“Fine.  It’s getting a bit hot.”

“Oh?”  That’s when I noticed his skin getting pink over the band.  “Hot enough to need to stop?”

“No.  Keep going.”

I took it up another hundred and I could feel the heat coming off the band now.  His fist was clenched tight, and his face was set in a grimace. I had a feeling that “a bit hot” might not mean the same from Vegeta’s lips as from mine. 

“Vegeta, I think we should stop-”

“No!  Keep going!” he ordered.

I flicked the unit up to its maximum.  Vegeta’s wrist turned red.

“I don’t think this is going to work,” I said.  But then there was an unmissable smell of fried electronics and plastic.  The tiniest plume of smoke emitted from the data port. I flicked the power off immediately.

The electrodes now showed that there was no current or voltage flowing through the device.

“It’s dead.”

Vegeta let out a huge breath of relief, and whirled towards the sink behind him, turning it on to run his wrist under the flow.

“Sorry, that was a bad idea.  I didn’t think that it might burn you.”

“No,” he said.  “It was a good idea!  This may have been how they were able to track me all along, and now it’s gone.”

He looked half stunned.  Maybe he’d never thought he’d be free of it?  Or maybe he just never thought it might be trackable?  When his eyes raised to mine they held a kind of calculation.

“I guess now if I find the family, there’s no way I can lead the WRU or Special Reconnaissance after me.”

“You didn’t think of it before?”

“No,” he said, looking down at the ground.  “It never occured to me.”

I guess he was embarrassed by that.  “Lucky you found me, then, huh? Let me get you some ice for that burn.”

We left the lab with Vegeta’s wrist bound in a wet cloth wrapped around some ice and went back to get our coats.  I dug out the fleece leggings I’d left in my drawer after going to the gym and swapped my pantyhose for them, wriggling into them under my dress while Vegeta carefully studied the scrawled notes and equations on the lightboard on the wall opposite.

Then I logged into my computer and sent a message to my supervisors saying that a family emergency had come up, and I wouldn’t be able to take the class tomorrow.  It felt bad to lie, but it felt worse to think that I had no idea if I would be back here at all. Lastly, I “borrowed” the snowboots my officemate kept under her desk for those unavoidable cross-campus treks when she had to shuck her precious high heels.  I had no money to leave her, so I took the bottles of tequila and triple sec from my bottom shelf, slapped a post-it note on them with the words “Sorry, it was an emergency! I’ll try and get the boots back to you! Bulma.” and left them under her desk in place of the boots.

“How are we getting out of here?” Vegeta asked, as I backed out from under the desk.  He looked edgy.

“Subterraneanly.”

I took him to the elevator, since we were close, and pressed the button for the basement, then swiped my wristband to let it know I had permission.  The doors opened on the unlovely storage area for the Bioengineering building. It had functional vinyl floors and roughly plastered concrete walls, and the space was filled with racks of unused lab equipment, boxes, mothballed obsolete scanners, and other large machinery.

I led him from room to room until I reached the outer wall of the basement.  A simple wooden door was set into a wall that was not original judging by its slightly different color and lumpy plaster job around the edges.  I swiped my wristband at the sensor to the left of the handle, but I got the rejected tone.

“Oh, shit.”

“This is your escape plan down the drain I take it?” Vegeta asked.

“I had access last year!  Why would they take it away without telling me?”

Vegeta tried the handle, jerking on the door sharply.  It didn’t open, but there was a little flex. Then he wrapped his knuckles on the surface.

“Hollow cell door.  Should be easy enough to break through.”

“You’re going to knock the door down?”

He grinned.  “I saw an axe back by the elevator.”

We returned, and he was right - there are an ancient fire axe in a glass cabinet by the elevator next to the fire alarm.  Its red paint was bubbling up with rust in places, and its cabinet was coated in thick dust. I had always wondered what one was supposed to achieve with one of these things during a fire emergency.  Vegeta lifted the little corroded hammer next to it and smashed the glass with a certain glee. Then he hefted the over-sized hatchet.

“Let’s get to it.”

His assault on the door was equal parts amusing and impressive, but I flinched at every blow.  I hoped desperately that no one else was in the building, as surely there was no missing this racket, even if we were in the basement.  Hopefully the walls were thick enough to muffle the sound to the outside world. He took his coat and hat off so he could swing unimpeded, and battered a decent sized hole in under a minute.  He tossed his head to fling away the splinters of wood that got stuck in his hair, and several times a blow took his arm through the door entirely. Once it was about the size of a large dog-flap he kicked the broken edges until they gave way, and soon there was an opening large enough to step through.

“After you,” he said, standing aside, barely breathing heavily from the exercise.  I squeezed through the splintered wood onto the landing of a bare concrete open stairwell with freezingly cold, metal handrails.  I searched around the wall and flicked on the lights when they didn’t turn on automatically.

“Down we go.”

Six flights of stairs down, we made it to the opening of the tunnel.  It stretched away in either direction, curving just slightly as it disappeared into darkness.  The lights from the stairs illuminated only the wall opposite us and a short segment of the tunnel.  A huge metal pipe hugged the inner wall, festooned with bolted on boxes, all connected with wires. As well as that, there were smaller pipes and aluminum trays bearing bundles of wires fitted to the ceiling.

“What is this place?” Vegeta asked, stepping closer to the large pipe and looking either way down it while I looked for a light switch of any kind.  On its heavy aluminum brackets it was as tall as me, but Vegeta was eye level with the top of it.

“It’s the old ERL.”

“The what?”

“Electron Recovery Linac.”

He looked at me blankly.

“Well, I mean the new old ERL, not the old, old one.  That one was dismantled.”

“What is an electron recovery...lineback?”

“Oh.  It’s a particle accelerator.”

For a second I thought he was going to ask what one of those was, too, but then he said. “Oh.  Yeah.”

“Vegeta, can you see anything that looks like a light switch?  I don’t have a flashlight.”

He reached into one of the large pockets on his coat and pulled out something that looked like a tiny metal stick with a glass bud on the end.  As soon as he had it in his hand the LED started to shine brightly.

“Are you powering that?”

“Yes.  A little toy I took with me when I absconded.  So, which way are we going?”

I indicated to the left, and we began walking that way, Vegeta in the lead with his light showing the way down the slightly musty, dusty passage.

“Is this safe?” he asked, setting a pace that almost had me jogging to keep up.  “Doesn’t a particle accelerator produce radiation or something?”

“It does when it’s on,” I replied.  “But this old girl hardly gets used these days.  It was built about seventy five years ago, so it’s a fossil.  They’ve got some much bigger and cooler accelerators North of the airport.  Us non-physics postgraduates get to use this one for imaging sometimes. That’s why I had access to it last year, and thought I still did, because I was involved in some experiments last year imaging synapse reactions.”

“Huh.  How do we know it’s not on?”

“It’d be humming, and the red lights would be on overhead.  Don’t worry. Even if someone fires it up, it’d take hours to be at maximum.”

We walked, and walked, and walked.

“How far are we going?” Vegeta asked.  He did sound a little freaked out, and I could understand that, because even though I knew how far it was, this felt like it was taking forever.

“It’s nearly half a mile.”

And then at last we reached the section under the Physical Sciences complex.  The array of machinery and equipment surrounding the pipes became bizzare and confusing - control and measurement devices, of which I had only a vague idea of how they worked - and then there was the door to the control room proper.  It let us in to an equally baffling room of large scale computer componentry and command panels.

My wristband didn’t work on the elevator, so we had to climb the six flights of steps and emerge from the fire escape in the lobby of one of the physics buildings, conveniently right next to a fast service cafe.  Outside, through the glass doors, I could see the sun was about to come up, and the campus had begun to come alive.

Vegeta’s eyes immediately locked on the hot and cold food in the cafe’s cabinets.

“Grab us some food, okay?” I told him.  “I’m going to stand here and grab the first car that pulls up to let someone out.”

I hung to the left of the automatic doors until I saw a car pull up and a single man begin to get out.  I rushed out and had my hand on the door before he could close it.

“I need a ride to Syracuse,” I told the automatic chauffeur, ignoring the man’s exclamations at my rudeness.  “Is that okay?”

“That is a-okay!” replied the cheerful AI.

“Good.  I just need to wait a minute for my friend.”  It was only a few seconds though before Vegeta joined me with a grab-bag of bakery items and two hot drinks.  I climbed in and he tumbled after me, somehow keeping the drinks upright in their cardboard holder.

“Go, go!” he ordered the car, and his tangible fear made my hair stand on end.

“I require evidence of sufficient funds before undertaking the journey,” the AI reminded him.

“What?”

“Vegeta, scan your wristband!”  I pointed at the scanner on the dashboard.  He did so, and the car began to roll sedately around the turning circle.  

“Thank you,” it said neutrally.

“What is it?” I asked as we trundled down the campus road.  “Did you see them at this end of the campus?”

“No,” he replied.  “But we are out in the daylight, and if they have more than just one car, they could be lurking at all the university exits waiting to follow us.”

I hadn’t thought of that, but it also seemed an extreme level of paranoia.  However, maybe I should start being more paranoid?

“Okay.  Maybe we should just…”

I slid down the seat and pulled my hat down hard, tucking my blue hair up into it.  Vegeta followed suit, the bag of goodies between us on the seat. A car with tinted windows would have been a wise move.

“This has been a harebrained getaway, so far,” he complained.  I bit my lip - it was my brain he was calling harey, but I supposed he didn’t really know what he was saying.  He was stressed out, which was understandable given the circumstances. I guessed that hunger was making him more on-edge this morning than he had been last night.

I watched the trees through the window, and after the car began to accelerate I dared to stick my head up.

“We’re on the main road North,” I told Vegeta.

He sat up slowly, looked about and gave an, “humph.”

“Is one of those for me?” I asked.  He looked down and took one cup from its holder and offered it to me.  “What is it?” I asked, trying to catch a sniff through the steam hole in the cornstarch lid.

“You seem to like sugary beverages, and I wasn’t sure if you’d like coffee or chocolate, so it’s a mochaccino.  From a machine, of course.”

“Oh.”  I smiled.  He had tried to please me, and a mocha was fine.  “Thank you. What are you drinking?”

He froze, then looked away.  I wondered if I had said something wrong, but I couldn’t think what.

“Pumpkin spice latte,” he mumbled eventually.

“ _ Oh _ .”

“I’ve never had one before.”

“Hey, no judgement here!  Of course you want to try new things - you haven’t had that much control over your life, so far.”

He gave me a withering look from the corner of his eye, and I shut myself up.  He was also a grown man, and I had fallen into clumsy-footed therapist mode.

“I really like pumpkin spice, and I like mochaccino, too, so if you don’t like one we can swap.”

He rolled his eyes.  “I can’t believe I am having this conversation.”


	5. Los Angeles - 2133

**CHAPTER FIVE: LOS ANGELES 2133**

 

_“Did you have a nice sleep, Miss Briefs?”_

_I squinted, not sure if I remembered sleeping, or even where I was.  “I need to go home,” I said, and patted my pockets for my house keys, or tried to at least.  Man, I was wasted. “I think I’ve had a bit too much.”_

_“Yes, the lieutenant was a little heavy-handed.  Let me get you back on track, Miss Briefs. I want to hear about Bardock.”_

_“Bardock?”_

_“Bardock.  He cornered you in your boarding house in LA, I think you said?”_

_“Oh.  That’s right.”_

_“Tell me about that.”_

...

I was lashed to one of Mrs Perez’s dining room chairs with packing tape, sobbing in terror.

“Please don’t kill me!”

“I’m not going to kill you if you do what I say,” the man pacing in front of me said.  He was pressing one of my landlady’s linen napkins to his face to stop the bleeding from the gouge I’d given him.  Stress poured off him. Now I was close enough, I could smell the reek of stress on him. “Just tell me what you know about Gine and Goku!”

“How do you know who they are?” I asked.

He spun on his heel to face me.  “I told you I was asking the questions!”  His agitation made the situation worse.

“Are you a government employee?” I squeaked.

“Am _I_ government?” he roared, and swooped down to grab each of my arms where they lay bound over the chair arms, shoving his face in mine.  “Are _you_ government, you little, soulless spawn of the devil?”

“No!” I cried, leaning back from him as far as I could.  “I don’t even have a job, let alone a government one!”

“Where are Goku and Gine?” he asked again.  “I know you know who they are.”

“I don’t know where they are, I swear!  I want to find them, but they went missing around the same time that Gohan died!”  He stared into my eyes, and the intensity of them shattered me with conflicting feelings of fear and familiarity.  This guy was related to Goku, there was no question, but he was like a violent flipside version of him. “Are you Goku’s dad?” I whispered.

The intensity died from his features and replaced for a second with grief before he stood up and turned away.

“Where are they?” he repeated.

“I don’t know!”

“Did you turn them in?”

“No!”  But even as I said it a little worm of guilt was eating into my heart.  “I don’t know if they ran or if they were...arrested or what! But I think it happened because we went to the hospital when Professor Gohan had a heart attack, or was electrocuted, I’m not sure.  Goku didn’t want to fill in the admission forms but he didn’t tell me why. The hospital called me later and asked for the details he hadn’t given them, and I told them about Goku and Gine. But I didn’t know that Goku was a secret!  I swear! Is he a fugitive? Are he and Gine fugitives?”

The man covered his face with his hands, still turned away.  “They are if they’re still alive,” he said, and my worst inklings were conjured to full life.

“No, Goku!” I cried.  And I couldn’t stop crying.  I went on sobbing loudly for minutes while the man went through his own agony on the far side of the darkened dining room.

“Why would they kill him?” I asked.

“Why would they do anything?  Why would they kill Gohan?” the man asked bitterly, turning again at last.  “Because they think they own us, that’s why! Not just me me and Goku - all of us, you included.  We’re less than pawns to them!”

“You think they killed Gohan?”

“Don’t you?  It was very convenient that he dropped dead at that time.”

I nodded my head in defeat.  All my worst suspicions mirrored back at me.

He watched me crying for a few moments longer.

“We don’t know that Goku and Gine are dead,” he pointed out.

“It’s been months,” I explained.  “Wouldn’t Goku have contacted me? I’m so scared for him!”

“It depends where he is.  He may not be able to. Tell me how you met him,” he ordered me.

“Professor Gohan offered me a job babysitting him.  We got to be friends - I know it sounds weird…”

“And this babysitting job was just... _coincidental_?”

“Yes!  What do you think?  That I faked four years of being best friends with him just to turn him in?”

“Maybe you just recently found out something worth turning him in over?”

“It wouldn’t have made any difference!” I told him forcefully.  “He and Krillin were my best friends!”

“Krillin?  Who is that?”

“Goku’s other best friend - another fugitive, and before you ask, he’s gone!  Him and his parents cleared out when Gohan died. They knew what was up more than I did!”

The man continued pacing.  He looked like he didn’t know what to do.  I tried to calm down as much as I could while taped to a chair, but I was starting to sense that this guy wasn’t really going to hurt me.  He was on edge, terrified that I was government, and Goku’s father. He could be in a gang or a drug addict, I couldn’t tell, but adding his paranoia to the fact that Goku’s existence appeared to be a secret made the pieces slot together in my mind.  This guy was a genetic fugitive, and so was Goku.

“If I could do anything to find him, I would,” I told him, filling my voice with my conviction.  “But I don’t even know where to start! I had no idea he and his mother were fugitives until after they disappeared!  I wish they’d trusted me enough to tell me, but they didn’t.”

“Oh, I wonder why?” he asked, his voice full of sarcasm.

“Fuck!”  I didn’t usually swear, but hearing this same point against me at this time pushed all my buttons.  “I get that my father works for the government! But I DON’T! I don’t know what he does, but I do my own thing!  I am not my father!”

“I can’t believe it,” he moaned.  “This is too big a coincidence!”

He stopped pacing and turned his head towards me, his eyes burning into me once more.

“Are you truly Goku’s friend?”

“Yes!”

“Why should I trust you when Gohan and Gine didn’t?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe because the worst has already happened?  Maybe because I’m the only other person left who wants to find Goku and Gine?”

He continued to stare at me for another few moments and then he came closer, and spoke in a lowered voice.

“My name is Bardock,” he said, and waited like he expected something from me, but the name meant nothing to me.  “If I untie you, will you help me find my wife and son?” His voice cracked on the last word, my captor, the big, scary man, began to weep.

...

It was a long night.  First I showed him to the draw overflowing with a mess of first aid supplies in the bathroom vanity and watched him clean up the wound I’d given him.  It seemed painful, but I was unsympathetic when I’d thought I was going to die only ten minutes or so before. Then I made us hot chocolate while he sat at the small kitchen table.  It was the kind of situation in old movies that calls for a medicinal shot of brandy, but I didn’t own even a bottle of strawberry schnapps, let alone brandy, and Mrs Perez kept her liquor cabinet locked.  Bardock looked like he hardly cared what I put in his hands, but I was glad of the heat of the mug and having something to steady my shaking hands around. It is hard to feel entirely comfortable with someone who has recently broken into your house and tied you to a chair.  But as he told me his tale I began to understand his paranoia and violence.

He started by asking me, “You know the power company, Illuminary Inc?”

I nodded.  It was an odd question.  Who hadn’t heard of Illuminary Inc?  There were renewable power generators everywhere all over the SSA, but where those weren’t enough, Illuminary Inc provided reliable, high capacity power.  There was a generator in every city, and even some small towns.

“Do you know how they make the power they sell?”

“It’s from children,” I replied.  “Ones that carry the mutations known as the Saiyan Hyperconductivity and Hypermetabolic Syndrome.  Their parents donated their DNA to the company.”

“And what do you imagine life is like for those children?”

I had a premonition about where this was going.  I had never thought about those children - that they existed was just a fact of life.  I already felt guilty as I answered, “It’s meant to be like a summer camp and boarding school, isn’t it?  They get a really good education, and then when their power fades, they’re reintegrated into society.”

He was shaking his head.

“More like an orphanage, and then prison, without parole.”

I stared at him, processing this.  “You’re a Saiyan?”

“Yes.”

I looked at his hands where he held the mug, imagining electrical energy leaking from them.  “But your power had faded, right? The adults grow out of it, which is why they’re reintegrated...”

Bardock leaned back, still staring at me while he raised one hand to the ceiling.  There was a spark and a pop, and the recessed light above us blew. I jumped in shock, looking between him and the light fitting.

“Did you…?”

“That’s only a tiny fraction of what I can do.  That’s what ‘fading’ is. Control. Not the end of our powers - it’s only the start.”  He pinned me helplessly with that intense gaze of his. I felt like my skin wanted to crawl away and hide, leaving all parts of me exposed; like he could stare like that for days.  Abnormal psychology was not my area of expertise, but it was obvious to me that this guy wasn’t 100% _normal_.

“I _‘faded’_.  And everything you know about Illuminary Inc and the Saiyans is a lie.”

...

“I was conceived in a lab in Illuminary Inc, and born in the delivery room a few dozen yards away.  I had no mother and no father, and I was raised by a team of professional caregivers in a ward of other Saiyan children.  Our entire world consisted of a few rooms and a caged outdoor play area, half a dozen nurses, and each other. When I was six years old they took away my entire world and sent me on to my assignment - to an automated copper mine in Arizona.

“Those happy, communal summer camp stories are a myth.  Some of us, or most of us as far as I can tell, serve alone, growing up in solitary confinement until our fade sets in.  So I did eight miserable, sorry years in a cell in the middle of nowhere until my fade set in, always looking forward to my reintegration.  Tell me, have you ever met or even heard of a reintegrated Saiyan?”

My heart had not slowed its beating.  I sat trying not to tremble as I anticipated what Bardock was going to say.  “No, but, there can’t be more than a few thousand spread throughout the Super States…”  

“You’ve never met one because they don’t exist!” he exclaimed, those wild eyes locking on mine.  “That’s something they tell the kids to stop them from despairing, and the public to stop them wondering.”  He clenched his jaw and then relaxed his grip on the mug with an effort, taking a tiny sip. I wondered if his stomach was in as big of a knot as mine was.

“The cell - Illuminary Inc doesn’t call it a cell, by the way.  They call it a ‘habitat’. My _habitat_ at the mine was large, I guess. I had lots of books, but after eight years there weren’t many I wanted to read, and I was frustrated by the answers I couldn’t get from them.  I had lots of games and vids for my wall panel and console - again, eventually they wouldn’t do. I had toys, I had remote lessons, I had regular, carefully prescribed meals. There was a gym and a run cut into the rock of the mountain for me to exercise in.  They even bought me a trampoline, but between me and the sky there was always bars and mesh. Nothing was a substitute for the life I sensed I was missing, and in the end, nothing could hide the fact that I was a prisoner and always had been.

“There was only one spot where the rock wall of my pen was low enough to see any part of the mine, but I used to climb up to the mesh and hang there until my hands couldn’t take it anymore, watching the robots trundle about the mine, and the big trucks driving themselves about.  I became aware that they were running off my power - living off me like parasites, and I was pinned down, unable to run away. And it was so unfair - they had the sky above them and the whole world to look at, and they didn’t even have eyes to see it or souls to feel it!

“I saw my Illuminary Inc minder every day except Sunday.  He brought me my meals and talked to me about things. And he would read me news articles on his display when I pestered him about what was going on in the world.  But he never let me out, and he never touched me, even though the insulated suit he wore would have protected him from the electric shock. At night time and on Sundays there was only a security guard, and they never came inside the cell, except in emergencies.  I used to sit at the door and call out through the grill trying to get them to talk to me. For the first year or so I was there, I used to shout and cry until they came before I would get into bed, and make them stand outside until I’d fallen asleep.”

He stared into his hot chocolate.  I was glad, because I was blinking back the moisture in my eyes at the thought of a six year old being treated in this way.  I could guess the damage this would have had done his psyche, but it was the sheer cruelty of it that left me unable to speak.

“Some of them didn’t want to talk.  They’d been told not to. But there was a couple over the years that were friendly with me.  There was also a cleaner, who was terrified of me, even when I was a little kid. She wouldn’t clean the cell unless I was in the yard, and wouldn’t clean the yard unless I was in the cell.  My life finally got a little better when they replaced her.

“The new cleaner’s name was Camila Son, and she liked me.  Twice a week she came to do housekeeping at the power plant, and she would chat to me the whole time she was in my cell.  I think she said she had used to be a crime scene cleaner, and she’d been chosen for this job because of her ability to keep her mouth shut, though with me, she did anything but.  She was always jabbering away.

“As much as I liked Camila, what really changed things was the day I heard something land on the mesh roof of the outdoor cage.  I thought it was a large bird, and went to the threshold to look, but it wasn’t a bird - it was a girl. ‘Look out!’ I said, and jumped back inside.  But she didn’t get off the bars. She stood on the corner and crouched down, trying to see in the door at me.

“‘Look out for what?’ she asked.

“I told her it was dangerous up there, and that she could be electrocuted.  She got off the roof pretty fast, then, and crouched on the rock beside it. She told me her name was Gine and she was eleven - the same age as me."  He smiled, unexpectedly, and suddenly he looked a lot more like his son.

“Camila!” I croaked, and then had to clear my throat and wipe my eyes.  “I thought the name was familiar, She was the professor’s wife, right?”

“Yes.  Back then Gohan was working at a university nearby, in Phoenix, I think.  But he was writing a book and travelling a lot, and there was usually no one home in the evening to take care of Gine, so Camila used to bring her and make her wait in the car.  Gine had gotten bored and gone exploring the rocks that evening. We spoke, but were utterly bewildered by each other. She asked if I was a criminal, because I was in prison. We talked until Basil caught us.  We were so fucking lucky it was Basil - he was my favorite security guard because he only kept the rules he thought were worth keeping. Camila flipped her lid when he called her, and I think Gine got in a lot of trouble.  Next time Camila came to clean, I asked her if Gine was coming, and if I could please see her again, and the next time and the next. I wore her and Basil down with begging, and in the end they decided there would be no extra harm in having Gine come inside and do her homework while Camila cleaned.

“No one was supposed to know.  Camila made me promise before she brought her in that I wouldn’t tell my minder, or the psychologist, or even the other security guards about her coming in.  I agreed - of course I agreed! I hadn’t seen someone my own age in the flesh for five years at that point.”

“A psychologist?” I asked.  Had they at least had some thought to his psychological well-being?

“Oh, yeah, there was one other person I saw twice a year.  The Illuminary Inc shrink. Sent for the company’s benefit, not mine.

“Anyway, when I first saw Gine through the cell window, it was just…”  He grinned. “My heart was beating so fast. She kind of looked a bit scared of me, and I think Camila had to tell her she was safe behind the glass outside the cell, but she sat down at the table facing the glass and picked up the handset to me on the other side, and said, ‘Hey.’  And it was the prettiest sound I’d heard in years, that girl’s voice.

“We talked the whole time that Camila was changing my bedsheets and wiping down my gym equipment.  She couldn’t believe how I lived, and I couldn’t believe how she lived. There were four hundred people at her school!  I had only seen about forty people in my whole life at that point.

“After that she came inside the power plant every time.  She never did her homework, though sometimes she opened it up in front of her to pretend that she was doing it.  We just talked and laughed. She used to tell me these bizarre - well, bizarre to me - stories about her friends and the cool kids at her school, and how she got bullied, which was insane, because she was...the cutest eleven year old girl you could imagine - prettier than any girl in a vid or game I’d seen.  I used to look forward to those visits from the moment she and her mother left for the evening, and if she ever couldn’t come for some reason I was so upset and sulky I drove Camila up the wall. I was always scared that that would be the end of it, and she’d never come back, but she always promised that she would.  She liked coming. She liked me.” He was still smiling into his mug.

“When we were twelve, Gine convinced her mother to let her put on the insulated safety suit and come inside my cell.”

“Everyone had to wear a suit when they met you?” I asked, trying to figure out how this power generating thing worked.

“Yeah.  Since Saiyan children can’t control the flow of electricity out of themselves, the power is siphoned off continuously into mesh that’s embedded in pretty much every surface of the cell.  That’s why we have to stay inside our cells - at least, that’s the one reason Illuminary Inc makes the most of. Non-Saiyans going inside have to wear an insulated suit, or else they risk the power getting siphoned off _through_ them.  I’ve never seen it happen, but apparently it can.  Well, the first thing that Gine did when she had the suit on inside the cell was come up to me and touch me on the shoulder…”

Here he paused, took another sip of his drink, but continued staring at some point on the table, lost in his memory.  I got the impression that this was a story he told to himself very often.

“Sometimes you don’t know what you’re thirsty for until you’re given a taste of it.  And I was dying of thirst at that point.

“Camila was not very pleased that first time.  Even she hadn’t tested the safety of the insulated suit to that extent, and Gine did it without thinking, but she was fine, except for the tongue lashing she got from Camila.

“From that point on, Camila would wear the suit to clean my cell, and then when she took it off to clean the rest of the station, Gine would put it on and come inside to see me.  I remember the first time Gine held my hand… Damn.” He abruptly put the mug down and put one hand to his eyes, covering them. “I don’t know why I’m crying at the good memories!”

I took the opportunity to wipe my own eyes.  My throat felt paralyzed, but I forced it to work anyway.  “That’s fine. I don’t mind.” Urgh! A doctorate in psychology, and this was the best I could come up with?

“I can’t stop thinking about where she is now!”

I imagined Goku imprisoned in one of those cells.  He was a half-Saiyan - could he produce electricity like that?  I’d never seen him do it, so maybe it wasn’t passed on. Then again… Gohan’s sudden illness now made more sense - he _had_ been electrocuted!  And Goku had not done it on purpose but by accident, hence his guilt, and his fear that he had killed his grandpa.

“Anyway,” said Bardock, clearing his throat.  “We would play in my yard on my scooter or using the little mind-controlled hovercopters or cars.  Or sometimes I’d show her what I’d been watching, but she thought all my movies and tv shows were boring, ‘for little kids.’  I had no idea - they were all I was given by the company after all. Camila used to get a little angry when she found Gine in the cell at the end of her shift, but she soon gave up on that.  She told me she couldn’t bear either one of us sulking if she kept us apart.

“One time Camila ran out of bed sheets, and she and Basil went out to another building to get more.  Gine was already in my cell, and she told me I should leave the cell. Like, just step outside and see what happened.  I never had even tried before. For one, the door wouldn’t open unless I had my hand on the wall opposite, or unless the security guard used the override.  For another, I was scared about what I would do to the outside world. I had lived inside a mesh cage my whole life, and that was for the safety of everyone else, not just to siphon my power.

“But Gine had figured out that the automatic door would stay open if someone stood in it, a safety feature, I guess, so that’s what she did.  She stood in the open door and beckoned me over. When I left the opposite wall it started to close until it touched her, and then it opened again.  When I got to her it still took some talking me into it for me to step outside, but I did.

“No alarm went off.  I walked down the corridor and back.  Nothing exploded. No one was electrocuted.  I was only out less than a minute and then I went back in the door Gine was wedging open.  We were both laughing.”

He sighed.  “But after that, the cell felt more like a prison than ever.  I longed to be gone with every fiber of my being. I wanted to fade already so I would be reintegrated, but at the same time I was scared because I didn’t know what that meant, or if I would see Gine again after it happened.

“She came every time she could, but if she ever skipped a night I’d go absolutely nuts.  I was so jealous of her freedom, and I knew that if she decided to, she could just stay away forever.

“Camila felt sorry for me, too.  And apparently so did Gohan, though I never met him.  Camila was having a hard time with her conscience working this job, and had spoken to Gohan about it.  Her non-disclosure agreement stated that if she talked publicly about what she’d seen, she would be detained indefinitely at best.  She was horrified by playing a part in it, but knew that if she quit the job she would only be replaced by someone else that maybe wouldn’t be as kind to me, or someone not foolish enough to bring their teenage daughter in to see me.

“I couldn’t stand the days I didn’t see Gine.  The psychologist told me I had to try harder to beat these blues and exercise more.  I wanted to punch him in the face. I never told him about Gine of course. I started writing her letters to give to her when she came, and she started writing them back, and it was in a letter that I told her that I loved her.”

He shook his head, smiling and holding back tears at the same time.

“And she told me she loved me, too.”

He took a break, swallowing the cooling chocolate in noisy glugs, hiding his face from me behind the mug.

“It was about that time that I felt like my power was coming under my control.  It was weird - first I started to be able to feel it, rather than just it happening, like my heart beating.  I started to be able to feel when it was weaker or stronger, and then I was able to change the strength, just by willing it.  I eventually I could stop the flow entirely, and release it in a surge, which caused the capacitors for the mine some trouble.  They sent the psychologist then for a special visit. He told me that I needed to let go of troubling thoughts, and let things just flow naturally and not bottle it up.  Of course he did - if the storage in the capacitors dropped too low the mine had to halt production!

“I told Gine about it.  I told her that I might be able to live outside the cage now.  My powers were changing, or fading, and I thought it wouldn’t be long until I was reintegrated.  We didn’t play anymore when she came inside the cage. We’d just hold hands or...hug, and make plans for what we would do after I got out.  Real dumb, silly things, like she was going to take me to a water park, or to see a horror movie in a theater. Then she had the idea to touch me without the suit on.  I was scared - I didn’t want to hurt her - but we could both see that I could power right down to nothing. So she took her suit off.”

His gaze was infinitely far away and bittersweet.

“Was she right?  Was she okay?” I started to wonder how safe it was to touch a Saiyan.  He hadn’t electrocuted me earlier, but maybe it was a chance thing.

He shook his head, blushing.  “She was fine.”

I decided I didn’t need him to fill in the details.

“It all fell apart one night when Camila and Gine turned up and there was a replacement security guard on, because Basil was sick.  He questioned why Camila was trying to bring her fourteen year old daughter inside the power plant, and she said she was just bringing her to wait in the entrance.  She was fired the next day, and so was Basil.

“Illuminary Inc took away the only friends and the only good things in my life.”  He shrugged. “I fell apart, too. I didn’t care about anything anymore. The mine spent more time offline than on.  The doctors and psychologists came and pronounced me unsuitable for service. ‘At last!’ I thought, they would reintegrate me and I would be free to seek out Gine again.

“They transferred me back to the Illuminary Inc main campus in the desert near LA.  I hadn’t been there since I was six. They tested me and profiled me, and I was as helpful as I could be, thinking that co-operating would speed up the process.  It wasn’t until I’d been there for weeks and was starting to get frustrated that they told me that _freedom_ wasn’t on the table.

“I had a choice, and it was a very simple one.  Join the ‘reconditioning’ program at the military’s Weapons Research Unit and succeed, or else.  

“In my first week at the Weapons Research Unit base I was so sick with terror I could barely eat.  I could see the sky at last, but I was still in a cage. A bigger cage. I guess, at least there were other people in there with me.  After my first month they teamed me up with five other Saiyans my age going through this ‘reconditioning’ program. For two years I was pushed to the limits, physically and mentally.  For any loss of control in either my power or my temper I was punished, but also rewarded when I did well, or my squad did well. When we got to a point where the punishments were few and the rewards many, we were told that we had graduated.”

Strangely, Bardock’s speech had become more clipped and less emotional.  He lifted his eyes to me, and his face was like rock - stoic, like a totally different person than the one that had just been blushing and crying over his lost sweetheart.

“The only choice they offered was lifetime service in the military, or nothing at all.  I was made to understand that my genes were precious, but _I_ was not.  We ‘used batteries’ posed a risk by existing, so unless we agreed to everything that the SSA armed forces dictated, we would no longer exist.  We would make ourselves as useful as possible in service to this country, or die. I chose to live. But I never forgave that betrayal, and I never forgot Gine.

“It was no bluff, either.  There was a Nappa in my squad, Nappa One Four Three, and he was kind of a hot head - didn’t think things through much.  Anyway, the first time the sergeant took my squad outside the perimeter, Nappa electrocuted him and took off running. We were still in view of the guard towers, and Nappa didn’t get fifty yards before the robotic sentry took his head off with a high caliber round.”

I felt sick, the leftover sweetness of the hot chocolate feeling cloying in my mouth.

“How old was he?” I asked, too easily imagining Goku in the role of impulsive escapee.

“Fifteen, sixteen?  Somewhere around there.  I was too scared to follow Nappa, and the others didn’t want to.  They thought he was nuts for wanting to run away when our superiors were treating us so well.  But he was like me - he’d made a friend from the outside, and he knew there was more to life than good food and a pat on the back.

“But it ate at me and ate at me.  Even if I never saw Gine again, I longed for the life she told me about.  The Weapons Research Unit thought that fear of retribution and a bunch of trivial freedoms would make up for the loss of true freedom.  Two or three years after Nappa died, my squad was taken out on a training mission in the mountains North of LA - a live ammunition mission, because Wilders had been spotted in the area, and we were supposed to shoot them for real if we saw them.”

“You had to shoot Wilders as a teenager?” I asked, aghast.

“That’s what we were trained to do.  They told us the Wilders would shoot us if they were armed.”

“But they don’t have _guns_ , do they?”  

He laughed.  “Yeah, they have guns.  Plenty of them. They never leave their borders without them.”

I remembered my only sighting of Wilders, and the long thin things slung over their shoulders, which I had naively supposed to be bows and arrows.  More likely they were rifles, then.

“So, I got separated from the rest of my squad.  It was a pretty dumb miscommunication. I told them I’d sweep the side of the valley and meet them on the ridge, but they thought I meant the ridge where we were heading to, not the one we were already on, so when I got there, they weren’t there.  I started to look for them, and then I thought, ‘Hey, why don’t I stay lost?’ I had a GPS, so I knew which way the city lay in - a long way away, but I really had no idea what the distance meant. I started running, back down into the valley, up the next ridge and down into the next valley, in the opposite direction to where I knew the other Saiyan units and the officers were, imagining I felt a target between my shoulderblades the whole time.  I ran straight into a Wilders patrol.”

I felt goosebumps break out over my skin.  All my blithe hiking in the hills, and thinking the Wilders just a slightly scary, mysterious people, and I had no idea warfare was going on in the mountains around the city.

“Did you shoot?”

“No!  I never shot a Wilder myself, thankfully!  And they were waiting for me - probably heard me crashing through the undergrowth like a runaway train, so when they ordered me to halt and revealed themselves, it was with half a dozen barrels pointed at me.

“They knew I was a Saiyan right away.  I asked them if they were going to kill me, and their leader said they were thinking about it.  So I begged for my life. I told them that I’d run from my squad, that I never wanted to go back to the military, and that I just wanted to live a free life.  And it worked.” He grinned. “It was probably the best thing I could have said to them. ‘Welcome to the South East LA Free America,’ the guy said, and came forward and shook my hand.  And then he said, ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here - the hills are swarming with carbons today.’”

“Carbons?” I asked.  “What do you mean?”

“Oh, that was their name for the Saiyans.  Because we all look very similar to the original five, the Wilders call us carbon copies.”

“The original five?”

Bardock gave me a strange look.  “The original five Saiyan children.  We’re all tweaked clones of them.”

“Oh, okay.  Of course.” I’m not sure what I had thought the Saiyans were before that revelation, but cloning and gene splicing made sense from a scientific standpoint. And probably a business one, too.  “And what’s a carbon copy?”

“Oh.  No idea.  Maybe some old tech?  They still use some very old stuff in the South East Wilderness.”

“So you’ve _been_ to the _South East Wilderness?_ ”  Not that I hadn't been glued to every word he'd said so far, but I hadn't ever lost my fascination with the Wilderness.

“Yeah.  They took me there - that's where I'm staying now, in fact.”

I could tell my eyes were bugging out, and I barely held onto the urge to ask him to tell me all about it.  Bardock wasn't here to satisfy my burning curiosity.

“Okay, go on.”

“The Wilders had been out to round up wild goats and rabbits to replenish their breeding stock.  They’d had to let them go when they realized how many of us ‘carbons’ and other army were out in the forest, and were making their way back to the city.  They took me with them. Now that was a long couple of days. Even my military training hadn’t prepared me for that. We hard marched through the mountains into the night. Stayed a handful of hours in a dug-out den on the edge of the forest, then got up before dawn and kept going, south east through the new vineyards and farmland, then hugging the hills, though the ruins of the old neighborhoods they were still demolishing, through the wreckage of old Downtown, and further until we made it to the barricade of the Wilderness in the middle of the next night.

“I don’t know what I was expecting, but they made me more welcome than anywhere I’d ever been in my life.  I hadn’t been through the gate for five minutes before I was fed and led into a house to crash on some stranger’s bed.  I was fetched in the morning, and Old Kami himself - he was the President at the time - saw me and spoke to me. He told me that he knew other Saiyans that had been there long ago, and that they would probably want to meet me, too.  My family. My...genetic mother, I suppose, Radishya and her rescued children and grandchildren.”

“They’re still out there?  Free?” Supposing the rest of Bardock’s tale was true, it seemed unlikely that Illuminary Inc or the military would be happy with that.

“Yes.  Still on the run.  They never captured Radishya and her youngest daughter Fasha, though they did get enough samples of Fasha to clone her.”

“Jeez.”

“I wasn’t the first Saiyan to run from the WRU and end up there, either.  One other had also done it, years ago, and they had a kind of protocol and a way to send an encrypted message to Radishya’s family.”

“Wait, what?  The Wilders had what?”

His lip twitched in an aborted attempt at a smile.  “Yeah, they’re not what I expected either. A lot of things about their way of living are quite rustic, but they have a lot of technology, some of it modern.  And they’re not some isolated outpost - more like an island in the sea of the SSA, and they keep in contact with the other islands and all the little boats out there.  I guess Radishya and the family are one of those little boats.

“They let them know I was there, and received a message in return that they would come pick me up, though it would take some weeks for them to get there.  And then, when I told Kami about Gine, he got someone onto tracking her down, too, using government records of her schooling. She was in LA.” He smiled again, seeming to forget about me and the kitchen we sat in as he peered back at his own history.  “Her father had taken a position at UCLA after Camila was fired, and the three of them had been here ever since.

“I called Gine.  I had never called anyone who wasn’t part of some training exercise in the WRU, and then I got to call Gine like it was so normal, like the only thing that had kept me from hearing her voice that whole time was not knowing a string of digits.”

He stopped then, staring for a long moment at the kitchen cabinets on the far side of the room.

“Was she happy to hear from you?” I prompted, wondering if he had forgotten I was there.

“Yes.  She couldn’t believe it.  It took a fair amount of convincing, but I asked her to come to the Wilderness, and promised they would let her in and not shoot her when she did.  I waited at the gate with the sentries to make sure she got a proper welcome, and then she was there! Taller, prettier than ever, smarter than ever!  I was so happy! For the space of a few weeks I was so happy! She decided to stay in the Wilderness with me until my family turned up. I wanted to ask her to come with me, but I was afraid to ask - afraid she would say no, because she had her family and friends and her whole life in LA, and I didn’t even know what my life would be like.  As it was, she’d started nursing school, but dropped out for the semester just to spend those weeks with me. I started having second thoughts about leaving with the Saiyans when they eventually showed up, like maybe I could make my life there, close to where she would be.

“Meanwhile, I was trying to impress the South Easters with how useful I could be, hoping to make them see I was someone they’d like to have around long-term.  I went out with a group some nights to provide the portable power source for electric diggers and power tools. They were laying in more boltholes and even tunnels through the areas along their route to the mountains, as it was getting harder for them to sneak unnoticed now that more suburbs were being cleared for more vineyards and orchards.  A couple of times Gine came out, too, just to see what it was about, but the last night I went out she was feeling sick, and thank god for that! The team spent about four hours digging, and we were just starting back when we walked right into an ambush. It was my own _squad!_

“I threw my hands in the air and got down on my knees, but the Wilders had different instincts than me, because they all went fleeing in different directions.  The squad fired after them, but they didn’t hit anyone fatally. They were more interested in me, anyway, the ‘traitor’ They’d tracked me down using my GPS unit, which I had stupidly kept.  That was their first real mission, to prove their loyalty to the army they had to hunt down one of their own and bring him in for interrogation and discipline.

“I convinced them that I’d been captured unwillingly by the Wilders, and used as a power generating slave, and I think they wanted to think that, so they welcomed me with hugs and never mentioned or said anything about how I got more and more anxious with every step we took away from Gine.

“They took me back to WRU in an APC that night.”

He shook his head.

“I had to convince my commanding officers of the same thing, and that I was so very happy to be back in that nuthouse army camp again when I felt like I was dying inside.  It was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do, but I knew if I failed, I’d be court martialed and executed for desertion. They did believe me, mostly, but they didn’t fully trust me after that.  I was never allowed outside the perimeter again.

“I didn’t know it at the time, though Gine soon knew, but she was pregnant.  We hadn’t exactly been careful in those few weeks we had together. She stayed at the Wilderness until the SaiyA family showed up, and they tried to think of ways to get me out of WRU, but the family had been trying to figure that out for years and not come up with anything.

“Gine came up with her own plan.  She would finish her nursing degree, and try and get hired as a nurse at the Weapons Research Unit base, and somehow spring me out.”

Gine had been a far stronger woman than I had ever known.  She must have been two years younger than me when this was happening, and yet I felt like a kid still.  I had no idea how I would handle all of that.

“If that failed, she figured maybe she could get a job with Illuminary Inc and see what she could find out about from there.”

“I was going to ask earlier - are the two linked?  The Weapons Research Unit and Illuminary Inc? Illuminary Inc is a registered corporation, so it’s not a government branch.”

“What makes you think that?” he asked.  “Because it has the ‘Inc’ at the end of the name?  WRU and Illuminary Inc are two heads of the same beast!  The whole company is a sham front for the government - it’s just a breeding program that creates cheap power at one end and enhanced soldiers at the other.”

I didn’t like being talked to in such a way, and gave Bardock a haughty look.  “I suppose that is a possibility. Did Gine’s plan work? It seemed that it took a very long time if it did.”

“It did, and it did,” he replied.  “She went home to her parents, before discovering she was pregnant.  That meant that even if she returned to the nursing school at the start of the next semester, she’d have to drop out before the end of the year to give birth.  And she knew her kid was going to be a half-Saiyan, so if she had the usual ante- and post-natal care, the genetic screening would pick it up, and she’d lose the baby. So she went back to the South East Wilderness and stayed there for a whole year, giving birth out there to keep Goku a secret from the government.  She had no idea what kind of child he would be - if he had Saiyan powers or not, if he would kill her during pregnancy or after. If I’d known I would have told her not to be so stupid and get rid of it, but she risked it, and got lucky. Goku doesn’t have Saiyan powers, or didn’t until recently.

“When Goku was a few months old she was smuggled back to her parents house and took up her nursing degree again.”

I was starting to feel bad about the way I’d thought of Gine.  I knew she’d been stressed, often lost in thought, but I also thought she was a cold mother who put her career over her son.  And instead she had gone through all this just so that he could be born and grow up safe and maybe one day have a father.

“When Gine graduated two years later, she then did another six months of study to qualify as a psychiatric nurse, then two years at the local hospital in order to build up the experience required by Illuminary Inc in its applicants.  By the time she was done, Goku was a toddler and Camila was dying of cancer. Gine worked her ass off and got a position at Illuminary Inc by the time Goku was five. They couldn’t send him to school - I suppose you know that?”

“Yes.  Though I had no idea why not.”

“Well, now you do.  Gohan and Camila educated him until Camila got sick, and then I believe that was when the job was passed to that guy Roshi.”

I found it hard to imagine this terrorized and frankly slightly terrifying man existing in the same universe as the old pervert, but I didn’t want to interrupt Bardock’s story at this point.

“Gine found out all she could about Illuminary Inc while she was working there, or at least all she could while she was a nurse.”

“Did she become one of those professional carers?  Like who raised you?”

“I guess.  We never had a chance to talk about it much.”

“That must have been hard for her - doing that and knowing what would eventually happen to all those children.”

“I’d say it was.  She was different after that - more closed off, more...icy.  I don’t know. I think it killed her more than a little to be part of that and pretend she wasn’t mad as hell about it.  She had to keep up an act of perfect service and indifference, because she was still trying to get seconded to the WRU. She wasn’t even supposed to know about the WRU, but she had seen over the years several of the toughest nurses be transferred to Barstow, which she guessed was an allusion to the WRU.  She kept trying for that transfer for years until she got it.”

The name Barstow jumped out at me.  My father had his office and lab in that town, I knew.  There was a Marine and Army base out there, but no Weapons Research Unit that I’d heard of.

“Barstow?  That’s quite a long way from here, isn’t it?  When was this?”

“About...four years ago.”

“That must have been around the time that Gohan hired me.”

Bardock nodded.  “Gine had to move into Barstow, and took some crummy house share there, and she only had time to come home to Goku on the weekends.  I know that’s been really hard for her. She was jealous that even Goku’s babysitter saw more of him than she did.”

“She mentioned me?”

“Not by name.  Only to say that Goku adored you, but she couldn’t trust you because of your family connections.”  Bardock gave me a rather cold and assessing look. “Why does a sixteen year old boy need a twenty year old babysitter?”

“He doesn’t.  I haven’t been his babysitter since he turned fourteen.  But we’d become friends.” Under his scrutiny I started to blush, and that gave off all the wrong connotations, damn it.  It had been bad enough when my own father had wondered if something was going on, let alone Goku’s father.

“Huh,” he said eventually.  “I guess Gine never found the time to mention that.”

“So she managed to find you at the WRU?”

His expression immediately softened, recalled to his memories.  “Yes. You know, I almost exploded the first time she came into the infirmary to give me some stitches?  You cannot imagine - I could have fried her, I was so shocked. I thought for a few seconds that I was hallucinating her face onto some stranger of a woman, but then she said her name, and… She had done it!  She had found me!

“After that I started to try and find reasons to come to the infirmary, because there was no way for her to come see me on the base, and no reason for her to bring me in besides routine shots and check ups.  I became the clumsiest fucker in the unit - always getting small injuries and illnesses. The other nurses began to tease her that I had a crush on her, because I always asked for her when I came in, and she had to pretend that she wasn’t interested and she wasn’t bothered, because we couldn’t let anyone know we already knew each other.  We started writing letters again, in tiny writing on wadded up pieces of paper that we’d give to each other when I came into the infirmary, or that we’d wedge between the leg and the top of one particular table in the mess hall for the other to find. Other than that, it was just short, stolen, risky minutes in the treatment room or the nurses’ office at the infirmary - it was torture!  Absolute torture. But it was also amazing, all that she’d done for me.

“We started planning my escape.  Or rather, she did, as I had been in that prison for years without seeing a way out.  Before she showed up in the infirmary I had almost given up on life entirely. I couldn’t see the point of my existence.  I couldn’t even fool myself that I was serving the country for a bullshit noble reason, because I wasn’t allowed to participate on missions, and I knew too much anyway.  I was a part time lab rat at the science wing and full time restless inmate.

“Gine eventually nailed down a plan, and it did take a lot of planning.  She was going to give me a vial of botulism toxin, which I was supposed to take at a specific time and day when she was on duty, and all the other ducks were in a row.  The idea was, it would make me really sick, and she would be there to make sure I was taken care of and properly diagnosed and then transferred to the hospital at Victorville.  She had a friend that worked as a doctor in intensive care there, and another who worked in the morgue, and they would be on duty to get me out of the hospital in a body bag once an antidote was administered.

“She gave me the toxin, and I remember I was supposed to take it at - 12pm, August 10th, which was about a week away at that time.  Then I managed to have a real injury a couple of days before the escape - unplanned. I dislocated my finger, but when I turned up at the infirmary she wasn’t there.  The doctor on duty said she hadn’t reported for duty in three days, and no one knew where she was.

“I felt absolutely sick to my stomach when he told me that.  I threw up in his office sink, and said the dislocated finger made me queasy, but I was panicking.  I didn’t know what had happened to her. I didn’t know if the plan was still on. On the morning of the 10th I decided not to risk it, and faked feeling ill.  I figured if I said I felt sick and then showed up again later with botulism it would add more realism anyway. When I went to the infirmary, I was told that Gine had unexpectedly been transferred, and they were all sad because she hadn’t even had the chance to say goodbye.”

I felt sick myself.  Gohan had been admitted to hospital the day before my thesis defense, on August 4th.  A day later Gine was already missing. I had texted her about her father being in hospital right at the climax of her long mission to free Bardock.

“Shit, no wonder Goku hadn’t wanted to call his Mom about Gohan!” I said aloud.  “He knew what she was in the middle of. Oh, my god, I’m so sorry! If only I’d kept my mouth shut when the hospital called me, or-”

“It’s still a big leap to make, though,” Bardock said.  “Someone sees that Gohan has an unregistered grandson, decides to investigate him...makes the connection to Gine working at WRU, but how do they make the leap to Goku being half-Saiyan?”

“Your connection to Gine and Camila at the mine?”

“Maybe.”  He was giving me a narrow eyed glare that I didn’t like.  “Or perhaps someone close to the family had been piecing the puzzle together from clues over time.”

...

_“Would you allow myself and my investigative team a little credit?”_

_“Sure.  It’s all yours.  I don’t want any blame or guilt on me or mine.”_

...

“So you don’t think they ran then?” I asked, feeling my last bit of hope for that failing.

“No.  Gine would have found some way to let me know before she went, I’m sure.  She didn’t have the chance.”

“I really was ill with worry that day, but I didn’t take the toxin.  I was in utter despair not knowing what happened to them and feeling useless to help them.  After a few weeks I’d got to the point where making a dash through the gates didn’t seem like that poor a choice, so I decided to take the toxin anyway, and see if I could find my own way out of there.  I figured if I died or failed, it wouldn’t be any worse of a situation than I was already in.

“I took the vial, and I barely had time to run to the infirmary and croak, ‘bad sausage!’ before I couldn’t walk or talk at all.  They rushed me to the hospital at Victorville, confirmed botulism, gave me an antidote and then - this is the part I didn’t realize - I had to recover.  It was miserable. Lucky for me though, Gine’s doctor friend recognized my name and description, so when I was a couple of days into my recovery, she gave me a high dose of sedative to make me appear more dead, pronounced my death, and had me wheeled down to the morgue where she and Gine’s other friend the morgue assistant smuggled me out of the hospital in a body bag.

“They kept me in an abandoned house near downtown for a day until I was okay to walk.  They didn’t know what had happened to Gine either, but they wanted me to find her. They told me that neither her or her father could be contacted.  The doctor called a car and we went round to Gohan’s house to see if we could find any clues there. We found that Roshi character instead, tidying up the house for sale.  He was the one that told us Gohan was dead.”

There was a heavy silence after this.

“I’m sorry you had to find out that way,” I said.  

“I never even met the guy,” Bardock said.  “I’m upset for what it means for Gine and Goku.  Not that I ever met Goku, either.”

I couldn't take that.  Tears started to slide down my face and I covered my mouth to stop myself from sobbing.

“So, Roshi is carrying out Gohan’s will, and he doesn’t know a lot more.  He said I should speak to you, ‘Goku’s best friend’, and told me you had moved back to your parents’ place in the mountains.  He gave me their address and your name.”

I felt a prick of horror at the thought of my parents being drawn into all of this.

“What do you suppose I found when I got out there?” he asked.

“What?” I gasped, on the edge of panic.

“Trunks motherfucking Briefs, getting out of his WRU car and stepping inside!”

I blinked.  “Wait! You know my dad?  How?”

“How?  Don’t you know what your father does?”

“He invents biotechnology for the military-”

“For the military, yes.  For the Weapons Research Unit.  Saiyan weapons development.”

I opened my mouth to deny it, but then realized I couldn’t.  I had no idea what my father’s work was, and I did know he worked in Barstow.  In Barstow or _near_ Barstow?  I gripped the table, suddenly fearing I would regurgitate the hot chocolate.

“Not my dad!” I said.  “Couldn’t it have just been someone who looks like him?”

“Yes, your ‘dad’!” said Bardock harshly.  “I was his test subject more than once. I recognized him easily.”

“Oh, my god.”  Had my father been the one piecing clues together for years?  Had he betrayed Goku to the military?

...

_“I think that is probably enough for today.  Cui, please arrange Miss Briefs to be carried back to her cell.”_

 


	6. Yonkers and Environs - 2144

**CHAPTER SIX: YONKERS AND ENVIRONS 2144**

 

_I surface from garbled dreams.  I feel sick. When I open my eyes I see grey concrete a few inches in front of me.  My cheek hurts. My face is pressed to the naked surface of a steel bench. I close my eyes again, against the nausea.  I feel like I’m swinging, rocking back and forth on the dampened suspension of a train, gravity shifting sluggishly, to make even lying still on the bench feel difficult.  What have I done? I don’t fully recall, but I know I’ve done bad. My thoughts reach for Vegeta and the past, and I begin to lose my grip on the present again._

...

Boarding the train from Syracuse was accomplished with minimum fuss.  Vegeta disapproved of me using my wristband for entry to the station platform, but there wasn’t any other option.

“They will know I went to the Syracuse station, but they don’t know which direction I went in, or where I got off.  And I don’t see us getting out of here any other way.”

As the train began to coast out of the station I opened the small sliding window at the top of the main window and dropped my wristband out, watching to make sure it fell between the train and the platform.  A woman on the platform happened to catch the moment and her face showed plain shock.

I didn’t know how I was going to get out of the station at the other end, but that was a problem we’d have to figure out when we got there.  We were heading East, shooting through a landscape of patchy snow and grey skies in a train car that was too warm and half filled with passengers from almost every stratum of New York State society.  We had taken two bench seats facing each other, with a small, flimsy table between us that held the wrappers and bags of the breakfast Vegeta had bought for us. I had demolished a po-boy and a granola slice, and in all honesty could have kept going if Vegeta hadn’t finished everything else off.  That had been the work of ten minutes. Now we sat in awkward silence with five hours of travel still ahead of us.

“Do you think I could get one of those identity spoofing wristbands?” I asked him eventually.

“I have no idea,” he muttered.

Shut down, I pretended to watch the scenery like he was doing.

“Was it expensive?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well...what about the hacker you got it from?  Were they hard to find?”

He gave me a scathing look.  “I already told you that I didn’t arrange it.  Do we need to be discussing this right now?”

My hand tightened convulsively on a sandwich wrapper.  What was with his attitude? I was finding it harder and harder to see the boy I used to know in this surly asshole.

“I was only asking.  No need to bite my head off.”

He went back to staring out the window.

“Hey!” I said.  “I’m trying to have a conversation here.”

His head snapped around.

“You want a _conversation?_ ”

“Yes!”

He stood up.  “Then come with me.”

“Why?” I asked, but he walked on, heading away from me down the aisle, and I hurried to keep up.  He led me through the train car, through the moving gangway to the next car, through two more cars after that, then the refreshment car and finally out the door into the open air of the sightseeing car.  There were no windows, only walls to chest height and a roof overhead, with the freezing wind whistling through the gap between. I caught my breath as it whipped straight through my dress and leggings. Snow crystals were carried like needles on the wind, and I could feel their icy sting as they hit my neck and face.  No one else was dumb enough to be outside - we were alone.

“Out here?” I asked.  “Are you completely _mad?_ ”

“Are you completely _naive?_ ”

“What?” I wrapped my arms around myself, leaning against the car wall for support and then instantly stepping away from its freezing steel surface again.

“Talking about things like my wristband in public?” he said, giving me a first class scowl of disapproval.  “You don’t know who’s on this train, idiot!”

I hadn’t considered that, but at the same time… “I am not an idiot!  And it would be quite some coincidence if there just _happened_ to be an informant on the very train we caught, when they didn’t even know we were going to catch a train!”

“You have no idea!  Do you realize how large the government and its network are?  They could have an informant on every train in the country if they wanted!”

“Do they?” I asked.

“I-  They _could_.”

“I guess they _might_ have enough people to have an informant on every train, but if I were running an intelligence service I probably wouldn’t bother with that on a daily basis.  There might be more cost-effective ways of deploying assets, don’t you think?”

“I didn’t say there _was_ an informant on every train - but you never know who’s listening!  Public transport is hardly the ideal method of evading surveillance!  I can’t believe we are attempting it!”

“I’m doing my best here with the resources we have, and I don’t recall you coming up with anything better!”

He glowered at me, silent and unrepentant and I really started to lose my temper.

“Look!   _You_ asked _me_ for help!  And I’m helping!  I didn’t have to! I could have just cut you loose back at the university while I hid out somewhere else, but I decided to help you, so you at least could try to respect that.  If you don’t like my plan, you can get off at the next stop.”

“Tch!”  He stood up straight, managing to express his displeasure without the employment of vowels.

“When you make your mind up, I’ll be inside,” I told him.  “I’m freezing my tatas off out here.”

As my hand reached the door that would take me back inside, he called after me.  “I’m sorry!”

 _That’s more like it_ , I thought to myself as I turned back.  He looked perturbed, or maybe even a little disgusted.

“You’re right, I don’t have any better ideas than this,” he said.  “But for both our sakes, try and take this more seriously!”

“I _am_ taking it seriously.”

“The government is more powerful than you know.”

“You’re presuming a lot about what I know.”

We had a moment more of stand off, and then I sighed.  How could I blame him for his paranoia being that little bit more pronounced than my own?  He’d only just gotten free of them after a life of slavery.

“I don’t want to cause you anxiety.  I will be more discrete from now on.”

“Good.”

“Now I need to go thaw out.”

...

Most of the rest of the journey was spent in silence, or talking of inconsequential things, like the view or our lunch.  After the mid way point the track veered South, and at each stop more passengers got off the train until Newburgh, when we were the last ones left in our car.  Vegeta was splitting his time between staring out the window and glancing over my shoulder at a screen mounted from the ceiling. Something on the screen captured his attention, and not to be left out, I twisted in my seat to see.

It was President Cold, holding court in one of his semi-regular televised speeches.  I felt the shutters come down inside me at the sight. When I was young, the President was a familiar, protective, and trustworthy presence on my parents’ wall panel TV.  I put an almost godly level of trust in him to keep me and my country safe. His rich, cultured voice and measured, nuanced public speaking had been reassuring to me. He was widely agreed to be the best orator in the history of the Super States government, and despite his name, his manner was always warm, always thoughtful.  These days I didn’t trust a damn word of his well-tuned speeches, and his benevolent smile grated on me like cutlery scraping a plate.

He had been president now for nearly forty years, which was slightly longer than his third wife had been alive.  The man was eighty years old, and looked twenty five years younger. Much was made of his active lifestyle, still indulging in his hobbies of hunting, fishing, hiking, and skiing whenever he was away from the Citadel of Chicago or the Mountain at Hope Springs in Colorado.  He was still a very tall man who stood straight as a stick, wide shouldered and muscled. With his looks and charisma he could have made himself a fortune as a Vancouver film star, but he had been born the son of one of the SSA’s early presidents, and had had loftier ambitions than mere fame and fortune.  The pictures of him in his youth showed him to be dazzlingly handsome, and even now the vestiges were still visible. I thought his cosmetic surgeon had a lot to be proud of.

Thankfully I didn’t need to suffer the cognitive dissonance of his voice against his meaning.  The sound on the screen was off, but closed-captioning was on, and I joined Vegeta in reading the words flashing across the bottom of the screen.

“There are those small territories that have enjoyed some leniency in the past - where our government has respected the wishes of those to self-rule, or to be minimally present in everyday life.  In light of the renewed threat from not only the Eastern Empire, but the European and African Union, such liberties, though cherished, for the time must be relinquished. A territory within our borders or in our waters, without oversight or access by Homeland Security is a threat to us.  Such places could even become a safe haven for our enemies, hiding within our midst. The people of these territories - by all accounts good people for the most part - are, due to difficulties of technology, resource and understanding, wholly unable to counter the threat of an enemy determined to infiltrate them.  It pains me to remove the responsibility from them, and it is with the greatest sympathy that I unveil the Naturalization Act.”

“Oh, _shit!_ ” I hissed as I read on.

“Be assured that no person from any territory will be worse off as a full citizen of our great nation than they have been in relative independence.  It is my hope, and the hope of all of the senate, that they be better off in health and happiness when they are brought under our wing. They will still have the liberty and self-determination of any Super State citizen.  However, the loss of their collective self determination is a sad wound to bear. I know it will be hard for a short time before prosperity, security, and time salve those wounds. And I know that you, as a nation, will welcome them with open arms into our great American family.”

The camera cut back to a newsreader, and I turned back to Vegeta.  He looked rigid with tension.

“It looks like we’re getting in just as the lights are going out” I said.  “Fuck! I mean...fudge!”

“How long do we need to find what we’re looking for?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but I’m sure something like a ‘Naturalization Act’ will take a while to get up and running.  We’ve got time to find them.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.  “Whatever you and they decide to make of it.”

“What about this threat from inside the territories?” he asked.  He still was radiating anxiety, his eyes boring into me.

“You mean the boogieman that President Cold just constructed to justify an invasion?” I asked.

“I don’t think it’s a boogieman.  It’s one of the scenarios we trained for at the WRU.”

“So, it’s a long-planned boogieman, then?”

He considered that and sat back in his seat, folding his arms stiffly across his chest.  “What benefit does incorporating a bunch of renegade territories bring the government?” he asked.

“Hmm.”  And then I realized I couldn’t quickly come up with a satisfying answer.  “A simple desire for completeness? Or maybe it’s land or other resources that the government wants?”

“Maybe.  But look out the window.  There’s quite a lot of land left to grab without invading a Wilderness area.”

“So you think there really are EE spies in the Wilderness?”

He shrugged.

We both withdrew into our thoughts for a while.  I couldn’t say if either of us was correct. It was my inclination to distrust every government utterance these days, but perhaps they sometimes told the truth?  I supposed it was possible that there were some people in the government that had had the foresight to predict a way for the EE or the EAU to infiltrate the country, and plan accordingly… But there had been no serious aggressions between the three world powers in twenty years.

“What else did you train for in the military?” I asked.  “What other scenarios?”

His eyes locked on me again, and he relaxed, tipping his head back against the rest as he reeled them off.  “Nuclear strike on Chicago, nuclear strike on Houston, nuclear attack on all major centers, biological weapons attack, major AI hack, government coup, uprising in Texas, uprising in Rio, uprising in Quebec…”  He took a breath. “All sorts.”

“That sounds like quite an education,” I observed dryly.

“It was,” he admitted.  “They taught us everything - how to use our power, of course, but also automatic weapons, handguns, sniping, infiltration, paratrooping, hostage negotiation, crowd control techniques, knife work, hand to hand combat-”

“ _Knife work?_  Wait - hand to hand combat?  Why would you need that? Wouldn’t you just - you know - zap the other person?”

“Not if they’re another Saiyan,” he pointed out.  “Or if they had an insulating suit. Or something else, who knows?  But it seemed like there was no end of stuff for the military to teach us.”  He was smiling slightly, enjoying my discomfort, I thought.

“You seem proud of it,” I pointed out.

His smile flattened again, before flashing wide.  “Well, if the only thing I get out of eleven years in the Weapons Research Unit is an education in violence and brute force tactics, I may as well be proud of it.  I was a good student.”

I felt like an asshole for having a dig at him.  It wasn’t _his_ choice what he’d been doing all these years.  “Of course,” I corrected myself. “You should be proud of doing well.  And you made the best of things.”

His slight sneer made me realize he had taken that as condescending.  Maybe it was? I had to remember that I wasn’t there as his psychologist anymore, to pep talk him.  He’d been through stuff alone that I had no idea how to handle.

“Not everything was awful about being there,” he said.

“No?”

He gestured at the little table, now cleared of wrappers and greasy cardboard boxes.  “The food was a hell of a lot better than this.”

...

The train finally reached the end of the line at Yonkers Station six hours after we left Syracuse. I was feeling a little queasy.  We had lunched on the reheated delights of the refreshment car, and that probably hadn’t helped, but the true culprit was anxiety. I had only a vague sense of how to proceed, and I had never been this close to New York before.

When we stepped off the train onto the platform a few others got off closer to the end of the train, hoisting travel packs or wheeling little suitcases.  I was astonished at the state of the station. Unlike Syracuse, where we had gotten on, or the other stations we had passed through, it seemed as if this station had never been modernized or improved.  The corrugated steel roofing of the platform awnings was rusted through in places, and wide rust stains ran from their corroded support beams across the crumbling platforms. At either side of the tracks, healthy margins of weeds grew with abandon.  

We were close to the head of the train, and the other passengers were all turned away, intent on leaving the platform.

“This way,” Vegeta said, pointing across the platform instead of up it.  A single line of track separated the platform from a six foot fence of galvanized railings.

“Surely there is an easier way out of the station?”

“Looks pretty easy to me,” he said.

“You’ve been trained to leap walls,” I pointed out, thinking back to every military training montage I’d ever seen in a movie.  “I haven’t!”

“I’ll help you,” he said, grasping my elbow and propelling me towards the edge of the platform.

“Wait!” I cried, spotting the three rails lining the track, and wrenching myself free.  “Remember that I’m not shockproof either!”

“Hey!” called a distant voice.  “What’re you doing with her?”

“Great, now you’ve done it!” he said, his eyes on the platform near the station.  “Come on!”

He let go of me and leapt down onto the tracks.  I had to fight every instinct in me that was telling me not to go down there, but, almost screaming with fear, I dropped myself onto a cross tie after the first rail and almost staggered, trying to keep my balance.  I knew one of the rails was live, and though I was guessing it was the odd looking one on the outside, I wasn’t taking any chances. Vegeta was already on top of the fence as I carefully stepped over two rails, and I could hear feet pounding up the platform, but some things just should not be rushed.  I made it at last to the concrete base that the fence was sunk into, and jumped, grabbing the top edge of the fence, and scrabbled with my snowboots to find enough purchase to scale the thing. Vegeta reached down from his perch and grabbed a handful of coat, leggings, and underwear, and hoisted me up with a massive wedgie.  I wasn’t about to complain though - I could feel the live rail waiting for me to fall back on it if I failed.. As I swung one leg over the top of the fence a station master was coming flush with us on the platform.

“What are you doing?”

Vegeta disappeared out of sight on the other side, and as I lowered myself down the other side of the fence I saw my next challenge - a ten foot drop down a concrete wall to the pavement.

“Oh, jeez, no!”

I crouched down on the narrow ledge the fence was planted in, fingers gripping the bars and looking at the drop, fearing I was going to break my ankles if I tried to jump like Vegeta had.

“Hurry up,” he urged.

“I can’t!”

He sighed.  “I’ll catch you!”

I didn’t like that idea at all - I’d much rather trust in my ankles than some guy’s self-estimation of his own strength.  I turned around and lowered myself over the edge, facing the station guard who was still shouting, and held on to the edge of the wall by my fingers as I tried to lower myself as close to the ground as possible before dropping.  My fingers started to lose their grip and I whimpered.

“Come on!” Vegeta said unhelpfully.

My fingers lost purchase and I jumped, pushing myself out from the wall.  In the next instant I felt hands grab my hips, and then my butt slammed into something, slowing me, but I still fell, landing on my hands and feet with Vegeta’s knees striking me in the chest.  We both cried out at the same time, and then he was pushing me up with a rough hand under my butt. Vegeta was splayed on the pavement and I was standing astride him.

“I said I would catch you - I didn’t say land on top of me!” he said, rolling to his feet.

“I didn’t need you to catch me!”

“Really?  Because you were acting like you did.”

The station masters voice drifted down.  “I called the police!”

We dropped our argument and ran.

This was a strange place.  All the buildings were old, mostly brick and concrete, and mostly derelict looking.  At the same time, some of them were obviously still in use. Unlike LA, where there was a very clear distinction between the newly built, habitated areas of the city and the old, abandoned, scheduled-for-demolition areas, this place was a mixture of living relic and dead ruin.

We turned down a rather worse for wear boardwalk alongside an inset dock, and found ourselves facing the wide grey expanse of the Hudson River.  A wider boardwalk hugged the buildings facing the river, and here there were some signs of life - people walking in pairs, walking dogs, pushing strollers, or coming and going from some forlorn cafes.  We slowed to a walk again, blending into the scene - just a couple out for a chilly stroll in March. There was a dreary air to the place, and an unusually high number of people wearing day glo visibility vests over their cold weather gear.

“Which way?” Vegeta asked.

I shrugged.  I no longer had my wristband to tell me such things, but I had checked out our route before I tossed it.  “I guess we just follow the river until we get there.”

So we did, following the dock as far as it took us, then turning slightly inland to continue South on the streets.  The strange mixture continued, with lights glowing in the windows of one building, and plants growing out the windows of the next.  We passed a school with kids wandering out of the gates, and bakeries, and electronics stores, and empty sockets of bulldozed buildings.  After twenty minutes of walking, the area became more industrial, and distinctly deserted. There was a creepy deadness to the streets, and the weeds grew thick in the gutters.  Not a single roof was intact. A strapping tree grew out of the hood of a car frame so corroded its only color was rust. If I had to guess, this place was derelict even before the Two Day War.

We hit a T junction, turned East, then South again and were confronted with...wide open space.  To either side, the low rises and houses had been cleared, and ahead was a demolition site as far as the eye could see.  Dozers, cranes with wrecking balls, demolition robots, and people in overalls and visibility vests dotted a landscape of tumbled brick, bent rebar, and mortar dust.  But between all that and us was a chain link fence that even Vegeta wouldn’t be able to get over - it was at least fifteen feet tall and topped with razor wire. There were signs at regular intervals along it warning that it was a high voltage electric fence, and to keep back behind the barrier, the barrier presumably being the flimsy, black and yellow striped plastic tape that was looped through t-posts at waist height a few yards in front of the fence.

“What the hell?”

I looked to Vegeta, but he was frowning, seeming as confused as I was.  “Let’s go around,” he suggested.

We turned right, following the fence towards the river, but it went right to the river’s edge, and in fact, into it, with spikes jutting out sideways three yards from the shore.

“The other direction?” I suggested.

But that way didn’t seem so promising either.  It was difficult to see with the dust drifting over from the demolition site, and the fog that was starting to come in off the water, but we walked a fairly long way without seeing a break in the fence.  We did come upon a gate, though.

There was a temporary looking guardhouse with a flimsy, orange-striped toll bar guarding the entrance to the fenced demolition site.  We watched a work truck pick its way between the piles of rubble and towards the tall gate, which swung open automatically at its approach.  The bar raised, and the man inside the guardhouse leaned out the window to wave at the occupants.

I looked at Vegeta, who was glowering unhappily at all of this.

“I’m going to ask that security guard how far this perimeter goes,” I told him.

He shadowed me as I strode up the window.

“Hey!” I greeted the man.  “That’s a good sized demolition job you’ve got going on there!”

The man, a fairly plain guy in his fifties at least, raised his eyebrows at me.

“Lady, I think that is what you call an ironic understatement.”

“So, _really_ big then?”

“Yes!  Ain’t ya been reading the newsblasts they’ve been putting across on everyone’s wristbands?”

“I’m...not from the area.  I just arrived on a visit to my aunt,” I ad libbed.

“Oh, well in that case.  They got all the biggest construction and demolition companies on the East Coast here all at once.  It’s a demolition party, and I’m the bouncer.”

“Wow.  How much are they tearing down?”

“Everything!”

“You don’t mean as far as the Bronx Wilderness?”

“As far.”

“Maybe further one day soon,” said another voice from deeper inside the guardhouse.  I leaned into the window to look into the gloom of it, and saw a grinning young man in grey, white, and black camo military fatigues sitting in a straight backed chair rocked back on its hind legs, with an automatic weapon laying casually across his lap.  I flinched, and hoped the boy didn’t notice it.

“Yeah?” I said, trying to pretend I wasn’t shocked.  I felt Vegeta’s hand wrap around my elbow and start to pull me away.

“C’mon,” he muttered.  But I hadn’t yet gotten the information I’d come for.  I shirked his grip and turned back to the older man.

“Hey, how far that way does this fence go?” I asked, pointing East, the way we’d been heading.

“Right across.”

“Across what?  The isthmus?”

“All the way to Long Island Sound, yup.”

“What?”  I couldn’t and didn’t hide my astonishment, but the man laughed.

“Pretty big fence, too.”

I let Vegeta drag me away then, heading North, to where, I didn’t know.  Another truck turned the corner and started coming towards us and the gate.  I had just enough time to register its drab olive color and bulky, slab-sided shape before Vegeta whisked me around ninety degrees, walking East again, our backs to the truck.

“Is that an armored personnel carrier?” I asked.

“Yes.”

Still with one hand holding my arm, he used his other to tug the flaps of his furred hat closer about his face.

...

We made a circuitous way back North, and arrived in a more populous area.  It was starting to get dark by then, the evening sun no match for the heavy clouds.   Construction trucks ambled through town, coming North from the site, and the streets were starting to fill with people.  Hi-vis vests were apparently the mode du jour for Yonkers night-life.

We hadn’t yet spoken of what we were going to do.  My own thoughts were scrambled by the dismay at finding the army here before us, and I hadn’t yet thought of any good way at getting through the corden because I was too busy thinking that maybe it was a bad idea to try.  But what else was Vegeta meant to do? What else was I meant to do, for that matter? I had no other leads, at least not beyond our meager budget, or that could be reached in a reasonable time.

Coming alongside a diner with an inviting looking interior of red velvet lined booths, and the wind-chapped red faces of workmen laughing as they stripped their outerwear off, I suddenly realized how cold I was.  Vegeta might have sensed my momentary hesitation, because he asked, “Hungry?”

“Not really,” I said.  I felt too anxious to feel hungry.

“Well, I am, so let’s do it,” he said, opening the door.

Inside I was blasted with warmth and the smell of a hot, greasy grill.  Vegeta picked the end booth, which was next to one with five burly guys packed into it, eating burgers and drinking beer.  It wasn’t a full service diner. It had old fashioned electronic menus with touchscreens to both order and pay, and I flicked through it quickly, mildly nauseated by the pictures of glistening, greasy treats and deep-fried fancies.  This particular diner had a salad menu too, so I ordered one and a bottle of sparkling water. Vegeta ordered crumbed schnitzel with mashed potatoes, cabbage, and gravy, _and_ a chicken bacon burger with fries and salad, _and_ a milkshake.  The Saiyan metabolism could be both a blessing and a curse, I mused.  On one hand, it would be very hard to get fat. On the other, the grocery bill would be through the roof.

After ordering, Vegeta slid out of the booth and came around the table to sit next to me.  I sat up straighter, unsure why he would do so, but then he asked in a low voice, “So what do we do now?” I understood that it was for discretion of communication.

“I don’t know.  I’m sorry if I brought you all the way out here for nothing.”

“It’s only a fence,” he pointed out.

“It’s an electrified, razor wire-topped, guarded fence.”

“Electrified doesn’t bother me.”

“Well, you’re welcome to try climbing that thing, but I won’t be joining you.  We can’t even dig under - did you see it has a concrete footing? I guess we could cut through, but first we need to find a hardware store, and I doubt there are any open around here right now.”  I looked at my naked wrist again, feeling disabled without my link to the super web. “And then we’d have to wait for darkness to fall before even attempting to cut our way through.” With a lurch I realized that if I did that, I was going to miss my meeting with my parole officer.  In fact, I had to be catching the afternoon train back to Ithaca tomorrow if I had any hope of making it on time. And if I did get back...wouldn’t the military police, or Special Reconnaissance, or whoever they were be waiting for me? Probably outside the parole office. I felt like I was in an elevator, dropping from the 100th floor to the basement.

Our drinks and food were delivered by a non-anthropomorphic robot on rubber tracks with cheerful AI personality and a checkered apron tied around its chassis as some sort of joke.  When it left us, we ate in silence. Or rather, Vegeta ate and I picked at my salad without speaking, as it was not silent at all in the diner. At the table in front of us the men, in high spirits apparently after their day of demolition, were talking loudly about their day.

“Did you see those John Leery crew from New Brunswick?”

“What about them?”

“They don’t know what they’re doing!  They’re god damn dangerous! At one point I had to tell our foreman to tell theirs to straighten them up, because they were knocking down walls right next to us and spraying us with bits of fucking brick, and he couldn’t find their foreman, and they didn’t know where he was, either!”

“Holy smoke!” came the expressions of dismay.

“Well, you know what that probably is,” said another.  “Most of these companies crewed up when they got the contract, and half their team is green.  That’s why we're seeing all that cowboy work out there.”

“To be fair, the new guys in our crew aren’t much better,” said another.  “They need their fucking hands held, or they won’t get anything done. But at least if they’re not doing much, they’re not doing something ass-backwards.  And they’re still hiring! Shaz Wilson was asking me this morning if I could think of anyone else they could call. They’re taking just about anyone with a pulse now.”

Vegeta turned to me.

“I have an idea.”

He stood up, wiping his mouth on the back of his hoodie sleeve, and walked around to the table of men.  He nodded his head in greeting, and the conversation of the table petered out uncomfortably as they turned to the intruder.  There was a stillness or implacability to Vegeta that I guessed some might find intimidating.

“Can I help you?” asked one of the older ones.

“I couldn’t help but overhear that people are still being hired for the demolition job.  It just so happens that I’m in the area looking for a job. Do you know who I should talk to about it?”

“Yeah, I’ll give you a name and number.  They guy is staying in town, too, so you can just meet them in the morning.”

They texted him details, a process made difficult by the fact that Vegeta didn’t have an account on his wristband to do an automatic details swap with, and didn’t know how to add information manually.  For that matter, I didn’t know how we were going to make the call - was their a local library here with calling services? I got up to help him, and by the time we were done, the man who had spoken looked like he regretted giving out the details.  Obviously he didn’t want any more mouthbreathers working alongside him, and what was a person who couldn’t operate a wristband other than terribly, dismally dense?

“Hey,” I said to the guy to distract him, “Do you think they’d hire me, too?”

The whole table cracked up with laughter.  

“Hey, there are female demolition workers, too!” I protested.  “I’ve seen a bunch tonight!”

“It’s not that!” one of them explained.  “It’s that you’re tiny, and I’ve never seen a demolition worker wearing a dress like that!”

I looked down at the clingy bodice of the red wool dress, and saw myself as they did for a moment.

They left shortly afterwards and we ate our dinner in peace.

“Think you’ve got enough money on that wristband to get a roof over our heads tonight?” I asked Vegeta.

“As long as it’s not the Hilton,” he replied, pocketing it.

“Let’s go look.”  

Back out on the cold street, we backtracked to a lodge we’d seen, but they were full.

“Oh, you poor kids!” said the older woman at reception.  “You are going to have a hard time! Everywhere round here’s booked up with demolition workers!”

She proved correct.  We pounded the streets back and forth, guided by the people we met on the streets who pointed us to this or that place, and tried at least ten accommodations ranging from hostel to bed and breakfast to find no vacancies.  At the last place we were told that the nearest place we might find a bed was White Plains, and even that wasn’t guaranteed. The receptionist looked up a bus schedule to find a bus that could take us out there, but found that the last bus had already left for the evening.  I felt my heart sinking into my feet.

On the streets once more the air was frigid, and ice was forming on the windshields of the work trucks parked outside.  I tucked my hat down, but a shiver went through me.

“What now?” I asked, hating to hear the whiny, distraught undertone to my question.  “Because I really don’t want to try sleeping in a derelict building in a frost!” Oh, why was I complaining to him about it?  It certainly wasn’t his fault! “I’m sorry, Vegeta! This really _was_ a harebrained plan!”

Just then, a group of young men pushed past us, and knocked me into Vegeta, who growled as he caught me.  The boy that had knocked me shouted, “Sorry!” over his shoulder. Then apparently he had second thoughts, stopped and turned right around.  “Hey, beautiful, you should ditch your grumpy boyfriend and come with us to Frankie’s!”

His friends hollered with laughter at his boldness, and they all hurried off into the night without waiting for an answer from me.

“Fucking brats,” Vegeta grumbled, still holding me around my shoulders.  I yawned, and then shivered, shaking all the way down to my boots. My coat was a good coat, but I had been out in the cold too long today, and it was catching up with me.

“Sorry.”

“Stop saying sorry.  If pisses me off.”

He started to tow me along the street, and I realised he was leading me through the small strip of bars and nightclubs we had already canvased during our search for a place to stay.  We passed two that were blaring music onto the street, and then at the third, which was not, Vegeta pushed open the door and ushered me inside.

There was music, but not so loud or as upbeat as the other places.  The bar was mostly deserted. More importantly it was warm.

“Are we here for a drink?” I asked.

“We’re here to get out of the cold, but it said on the door that it was open till ‘late’ so we’ll test them on that.  I suppose we might have to buy drinks to make us valued, paying customers. What do you want?”

“Just a beer,” I said.  “I don’t care what.”

While Vegeta got drinks I spied a couch in the corner and headed there, snuggling down, then taking my coat off and laying it over me like a blanket.  Vegeta returned and sat next to me, two stout beers in hand.

“It wasn’t that harebrained,” he said.

“What?”

“Your plan.  It wasn’t so bad.  There was no way of knowing that this was happening.”

“Oh.  Thanks.”

We sipped our drinks and I yawned some more.

“I could fall asleep where I’m sitting,” I said.

“Maybe we should - this might be the closest thing to a bed we get tonight.”

He slid down the seat until his head was resting on the back cushion of the couch like mine was, and shuffled over until he was flush with me.  

“You can lean on me,” he said.

“You think you could sleep in this place?” I asked in surprise.  It might be half deserted, but it wasn’t _completely_ deserted, and it was still a bar.

“The military teaches you how to sleep anywhere,” he replied.  “Make yourself comfortable.”

I hesitated, wondering at the wisdom of doing so.

“This isn’t a romantic come-on,” he pointed out, making me blush deeply.

“I know!  Of course it’s not!”

“I just want to use your head as a headrest.”

“Sure.”

I could allow that.  He settled his head against mine, and I closed my eyes, waiting for my blush to die away again.  How mortifying! Of course it wasn’t some come-on move of his! He may have had a huge crush on me eleven years ago, but it was clear enough that he didn’t now.

We sat still like that for a long time.  I was afraid to move in case I woke Vegeta, though I also had my doubts that he was asleep, and I didn’t want him thinking I was just sitting here, too wound up despite my tiredness to sleep, which I was.  I was uncomfortable, too, though not physically. I was in fact very warm, especially where he rested against my side. The couch was deep and soft, and Vegeta’s cheek pressed against the side of my head was not too heavy.  But it was all too intimate. I could smell him, and not just the understandable musk of someone who had been physically active and not had a shower that day, which I could smell on myself, too, but the underlying scent of his skin.  My nose was close to his neck, and my breath was full of the pleasant, warm powderiness of him that ignited that instinct in me, suggesting that I turn my face and bury myself in it. These feelings were not useful at all, especially when it was obvious that I was no more than a prop to him.  I wondered if he regretted coming to me for help. So far I hadn’t achieved anything useful.

Remembering my parole appointment again, I wondered if I could put it off.  Just getting hold of my parole officer would be a trial without my wristband, and was it worth it?  I would need a pretty good excuse, and aiding and abetting a deserter did not count as that. Then I realized that just being here with Vegeta was the most blatant violation of the number one stipulation of my parole - I was not to have contact under any circumstance with my supposed victim.  If the police caught up with me at this point, I was going back to prison, no two ways about it. I felt even less like sleeping then..

In the meantime, we could use some more money.  My parents had enough, and for these extreme circumstances, I would put aside pride and principle to take it from them, but again, the lack of wristband made it hard.  How would I access it? Would I have to go to an actual physical bank branch? They only maintained those in the major centers, and I had no idea how to withdraw money in person.  Where would the nearest be? Philadelphia? Chicago?

Somehow though, I fell into a doze.  I was woken by a gust of cold air from the door opening.  I half opened my eyes to watch another crew of workmen walk in and order drinks.  They were dressed casually, no coveralls or hi-vis vests, but I could tell they were demolition crew by the dust-covered work boots they all wore.  I watched them order and start knocking back their first pints of beer. These guys were drinking with intent. I saw some of them looking hopefully around the bar, and when their eyes snagged on me I realized the same thing they did.  I was the only woman in the joint.

I had an idea.

I sat up slowly.  Vegeta shifted off me, letting me go.  I grabbed the rest of my stout and wandered back to the door and looked out.  I couldn’t see any work trucks parked outside. With any luck these guys had walked.

I went back to Vegeta, drinking my stout as quickly as I could.

“Do you have a sudden thirst?” he asked, not asleep now, if he was ever.  

“No, I have an idea.  Be ready to leave in a hurry - I’m going fishing.”

While he was puzzling that one out I sashayed over to the men at the bar, glad of my red dress now.  As I leaned against the bar, waiting for service I looked up and _happened_ to catch the eye of one of them also waiting to be served.

“Having a nice night?” he asked.

I shrugged.  “It’s not been that interesting so far.”

“Oh?  What you been up to?”

“Just hanging out, looking for some excitement.  This town is…” I mimed a yawn, and he laughed.

“Yeah, I get that.  And it’s a real sausage fest, too.”

“Well, I don’t mind _that_ so much.”

The bartender came over and asked the guy for his order.

“Can I buy you a drink?” the guy asked uncertainty, as if in full expectation of my refusal.  He was probably a bit younger than me, with a round face and ill-advised sandy colored beard.

“I wouldn’t say no.”

He grinned.  “Same again?”

“Pilsner, thanks.”

As the bartender filled our glasses he continued beaming at me.  

“So, you from around here?”

“God, no!  Visiting my aunt.”  I went with my earlier lie.  “Hey, at least this time that I visit, there’s all this demolition hoo-ha going on.  That’s way more interesting than normal.”

“Yeah?  You know I’m working that job?”

“ _Really?_ ”

“Yeah, me and my crew have come up from Philly!”

“Wow.  Are these your crew?” I asked, waving at the men behind us.

“Yeah.  Well, not _my_ crew, but I’m on the crew.”

“Can you introduce me?  I’m really interested in what you guys have been up to!”

“Sure!”

He did, and soon I was the focus of six mens’ attention.  I asked them as many innocent seeming questions about the demolition and the army that I could, and they answered what they could, but deflected a lot with, “Aw, we’re not supposed to say.”

“I will say, though,” announced Gavin, the one who bought me the first drink, “That we’re going to have demolished everything to the border of The Bronx by the end of the week, but we’re contracted here for another three months.”  He winked.

“I don’t think it’s a secret anymore,” said another.  “Did you hear President Cold’s speech today? I don’t think it’s too hard to work out from that, that the government is not planning on The Bronx being there for much longer.”

My worst suspicions were confirmed, and my smile felt completely forced and unnatural as the men around me offered their opinions.

“I’m glad.  I mean, why would you let people exist inside our borders that have no loyalty to the rest of us?  Who knows what they’re up to?”

“I don’t think they’re up to much.  Just diddling their sisters and raising their six-fingered kids.”

They all laughed at that.

“No, I think it’ll be good for them to be finally taken care of,” said the tallest one.  “Finally get some real education and healthcare. I think it’s best for them.”

Thankfully the conversation moved on from that particular topic.  They all seemed a bit younger than me, so I did my best to seem...girlish.  I slammed back my beer almost as fast as they did to aid the act - an almost automatic action after my barfly days in Mexico.  As one of them went to get me another drink I reminded myself that this time I only wanted to seem tipsy, not actually _be_ tipsy.

“Hey, I love those massive trucks you guys cruise around in,” I said once I had another beer in hand.  “So awesome. I’ve never been in a truck like that before.”

“I could take you out for a drive in our truck after our shift ends tomorrow,” said the tallest one.  He was a bit gangly, but not bad looking.

“Oh, are you like, in charge of the vehicle or something?”

“Something like that - I’m the driver!”

“Oh, wow!”  I immediately flitted across the group to his side.  “That’d be so cool! I love big vehicles! I should have been born in the twentieth century - I’d have been a long haul truck driver or… drove trucks in a mine!”

He laughed.  “It’s not that big!  But yeah, it’s pretty cool.”

“What’s your name again?” I asked.

“Callum.”

I smiled at him, then clinked my glass to his.  “We’ve got a date, then, Callum. What time do I meet you?  And where?”

He grinned, looking absolutely delighted.  “Six o’clock? We’re staying at the Regency Inn, if you know it?”

I did, having just been there during our failed quest to find a place to sleep.  It wasn’t nearly as fancy as its name. “Sure!” I made sure I was pressed against his side as I told him, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.  Is that where your truck is now? Parked at the Inn?”

“Yeah.  Why?”

“Maybe you could show it to me tonight?”

He smiled uncertainly.  “I could… We couldn’t drive it tonight though - the cab has an alcohol breathalyzer, and it won’t drive if I’m over a certain limit.”

“Ah.  Of course.  But we could just sit in the cab together, right?”

“Boy, you really do love trucks!  Either that, or Yonkers has you out of your brain with boredom!”

“Why can’t it be both?”

He laughed.

I glanced around the bar.  Vegeta was no longer on the couch, but I spotted him lounging against the bar, nursing his half empty pint of stout.  He treated me with a black glare. I guess I could have shared more of my plan before launching into it, but I hadn’t been quite sure what it was until now.

“How did you get to be a driver?” I asked, just throwing something out there to keep him thinking I was interested.

“Oh, I joined the company about seven years ago, and about four years ago my boss said he thought I had the qualities for more responsibility, so they sent me for special training, and…yeah.  I’m a driver now. And it really is the best job on the crew. I still have to do all the other jobs, too, but I also get the keys…”

The bunch of lads seemed nice enough, and were quite entertaining, barring my self-inflicted chatter about trucks with Callum.  One of them told a tale about being in a port-a-potty when it got bowled over by a clumsy digger, and his description of the blue chemical hell filled with turds and paper had me laughing so hard I staggered.  Callum took this opportunity to snake his arm around me to hold me upright, which was exactly the sort of thing I was hoping for.

“Hey!” said one of the others, whose name I think was Leroy.  “Your boyfriend looks like he wants to murder Callum!”

I looked over to the bar and saw Vegeta looking repulsed.  Catching my eye, he pointedly looked the other way. He was radiating fury, and I wondered what he thought was going on.  Obviously I was going to have to say something to him.

“He’s not my boyfriend!” I protested loudly.  “He’s just my cousin.” I had already told the tale to the group about how I had been obliged to come visit my aunt by my mother, who was too sick to travel.

“Kissing cousin?” Leroy suggested.  “He looks pissed.”

I hissed with pretended disgust.  “I don’t know what his problem is.  He was boring me to death! If he can’t handle me having a good time with other men, he knows the way home!”

I left Callum and the others and stomped over to Vegeta.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked me.

“Getting us a way into the demolition site,” I told him.  “These guys are staying at the Regency Inn, and their truck is parked there, too.  We’re going to take it. Wait for me in the parking lot there, okay? And don’t drink any more.”

I glanced over at Callum again, who was watching us nervously.  He was on his third pint.

“I might be a while,” I warned Vegeta.

“What are you going to do?”

“Steal candy from a poor, poor baby.”

Vegeta looked positively ill.  “Do you even know what you’re doing?”

“I’m no stranger to the art of seduction.  Believe me, I’ve got this all under control.”  

He looked even more angry at that.  

“Look, just go wait in the parking lot!” I said, keen to have him gone.  “I’ll be at least an hour. What’s the worst that can happen? We’re in Yonkers!”

He left, still angry, marching out the door and pulling it closed behind him, though the pneumatic hinge prevented it from slamming.  I felt a little guilty as he went, remembering who Vegeta was all over again. But I was doing this for him. I rolled my eyes for the benefit of my audience and then skipped back to Callum’s side.

“Sorry, my cousin is a bit of an a-hole.”

I found myself with another drink pressed into my hands.

The night progressed, with the group moving down the street to another bar.  I avoided the next round, but not the next. I let Callum pull me into his lap at a table where his friends set up a tray of shots, and got away with slowly sipping one while they knocked back a few.  Callum’s hand was rubbing up and down my thigh, but I was a bit too buzzed to care.

At some point we lost Leroy and another to the pursuit of other women in the bar, and then the remainers were complaining that they were hungry and needed takeout before heading back to the inn.

I caught Callum by the face.

“Let’s ditch the others and go back to your hotel,” I said.

He squeezed me.  “Yeah. Let’s.”

He chatted amiably as we wove down the frosty streets, and I realized that maybe this wasn’t as in my control as I’d planned.  I was drunker than I had meant to be, and I had hoped to find the keys before we’d gotten to this point, but I had slipped my hands in both his jacket pockets and found nothing that felt like a key.  I started to feel nervous. If he didn’t have the key on him, would it be in his hotel room? How would I find it? Callum was pretty drunk - with luck, he would obligingly pass out, but I knew I was not that lucky a person.  If he was completely able and expecting to perform, what would I do then? Would I? Could I? It wouldn’t be the first one night stand I’d regretted, but it would be the first I never wanted in the first place! No, I would have to get him to let me in the cab before that happened.

The parking lot at the Regency Inn was packed with oversized trucks.

“Can we go in your truck, now?” I asked as we walked past them.

“Maybe later,” he said, stopping to squeeze me.  “I’m sharing a room with Leroy, so let’s go up there now, before he gets back.”

“But I wanna do it in the truck!”

He laughed.  “Wow, you are so into it!” He slipped his hands down to my ass, pulling me flush against his hips.  “I’ll see what I can do.”

He leaned down, bending his head to kiss me, and then a meaty thunk sounded. and his head flicked back.  I staggered as he fell sideways, his arms still around me. I managed to stop him hitting the ground at full speed, but not from hitting it at all.

“Fuck!”

I was aware of a presence behind me, and then I was hoisted back to standing by a hand under my arm.  Vegeta was grumbling and shaking his other hand out from the blow he'd just delivered.

“What did you do that for?” I cried, looking down at the fallen Callum.

“Was this not the plan?”

“No!”

“Sorry, I didn’t realize you were serious about sleeping with this…person.”

“What?  No! I just meant that wasn’t the plan!”

“Then what was the plan?”

“I was going to go up to his room and get the keys off him there, then sneak back out.  Not deck the poor schmuck!”

“That plan sucks.”

“We don’t even know if he has the truck keys on him!”

“Well, he will at least have the room key.”

He leaned over and hooked Callum under the shoulders and dragged him back into the shadows between the trucks.  Then he started going through the guy’s pockets far more thoroughly than I was able to, digging into the depths of his jeans pockets.

“Got ‘em,” Vegeta announced, coming up holding a keyring with a fob, a key card, and a metal key attached.  He pressed the key fob and one of the trucks next to us flashed its indicator lights, and we heard the locks drop.

“Wait there,” he ordered me, stooping to manhandle Callum again.  Instead I followed him as he dragged Callum to a low, mossy wall that divided the car park from the courtyard of another bar next door.  

“What are you doing to him?” I whispered.  No one was game enough to be drinking outside, but the sound of voices was clear through the back door.

“Just getting him out of the way.  Grab his feet.”

Together we lifted him over the wall and deposited him on the pavers next door, then Vegeta hurried me back over the wall.

“He could wake up at any moment,” he muttered.  “Get in the cab.”

The truck’s door handle was at head height on me.  I opened it, eyed the footplate and handle, preparing to haul myself up, then found myself boosted up to sprawl in the front seat, the door closing behind me.

“Grumpy ass,” I grumbled to myself.  What was with Vegeta? Then I realized that he wasn’t getting in the other door.  

“Where the hell did you go?”  I was left anxious and unable to do anything but sit tight.

When he did eventually return he had some clean coveralls and a duvet under his arm, which he threw onto the backseat.

“Wow, that’s pretty harsh on poor Callum,” I pointed out, guessing that he had raided the guy’s room.  “Now he’s going to have a concussion _and_ a bill for missing property.”

“Well, I don’t want to freeze to death, and I am pretty keen to get to where we’re going _before_ the army raizes it to the ground.”

“Come through to the front,” I said, eyeing the driver’s seat in front of me.  It had a large steering wheel with grips that looked like human hands were meant to hold it, not just for show.  “I think I may have drunk too much.”

“You don’t say?”

“There’s a breathalyzer - some safety feature,” I said, ignoring his remark, as it was warranted.  “The truck won’t go if the driver is over some limit.”

Vegeta climbed through the wide gap between the double-wide front seat and the driver’s seat and settled himself in.  Then he began looking around the dash and cab for the ignition button. The truck hummed to life when he found it, headlights turning on automatically, the dash lighting up.

“Fasten seatbelts” the female voice of the truck ordered us, then, “State destination.”

 ...

We directed the truck to drive us to the deserted part of Ludlow, near the fence but not in sight of it.

“So what’s the plan?” I asked.

“You were the one with the plan,” he pointed out.

“Oh.  We may as well sleep then, as I doubt they are letting anyone into the site at night.  But we should get up early, and try and get in there before the site is full, so there are less people to question us.”

“I figured.”

“I figured you figured - you stole Callum’s duvet.”

He shrugged, then climbed into the backseat of the cab, then began hunting about in the dark.  I eyed the duvet while he complained about the narrowness of the seat and not being able to find any way to recline it.  I felt around the bench seat I was on, found a lever and pulled. It flicked back far enough to hit Vegeta.

“Ow!”

“Sorry!  But look, this one reclines!”

“Is there enough room?”

“Well, define ‘enough room’.”

He climbed back over and eased himself into the seat next to me.  I experimented, and found that without him in the way, it went back all the way to be flush with the back seat, like a lumpy, uncomfortable bed, only slightly wider than a single mattress.

“I guess that will have to do,” said Vegeta, pulling the duvet over our still fully-clothed bodies.  “Sorry I’m not ‘poor Callum,’ though.”

“Ha, ha,”  I said. “I assume you are joking.  I had no intention of actually sleeping with him.  But that doesn’t mean I think he deserved to be slugged in the face.”

“You seemed prepared to suck face with him, though.”

“And I did it all for you,” I pointed out.

We lapsed into uncomfortable silence, lying side by side like wooden dolls.  The cab was spinning a little. With the truck’s motor off I could already feel the temperature in the cab dropping, my face getting chilly again.  I was glad he’d taken the duvet. Maybe one day I could find Callum again through his company and pay him back for the bill he was likely to get. Maybe.  I remembered the appointment with the parole officer I was going to miss. My chances of getting back to a normal life, with money and the freedom to use it, were slim.  I felt my throat getting tight at the thought. Making out drunkenly with someone, even Callum, didn’t seem like a bad idea at that moment. It would mask my dismay at least.

“I went to jail for unlawful sexual conduct with a minor - with you.”  The words just popped out of me. I only realized then that I’d been holding them back since the night before.

“I know.”  

“My parole officer would shit a brick if she could see me now.  The first provision of my parole is that I never have contact with you again.”

“Good thing she can’t see us then.”

“Well, with my luck, a police officer will come along, and it will be the same result.  If they identify you.”

“I might point out that we are in a stolen truck, so it wouldn’t exactly be wonderful even if they didn’t.  And if they _did_ identify me, it’s somewhat worse than jail for me.”

“Shit.  I forgot!  At least I didn’t kidnap you this time.”  I smiled weakly in the dark, trying to make it a joke, but of course he couldn’t see.  “This time it’s all your doing!” I wondered again if he regretted contacting me, but he didn’t enlighten me.  He snorted.

“You didn’t kidnap me last time, either.  You were saving me, right? I wanted to come.”

“Yes, well.  You were under the legal custody of Illuminary Inc, so it doesn’t matter if you wanted to come or not - legally it was kidnapping, even if it was better for you, which, by the way, I’m not sure it was, given the way things have turned out.  Technically, I can’t argue against that conviction.”

“It doesn’t stand in my eyes,” he told me dispassionately.  “The same as with the ‘unlawful sexual conduct’. I wanted it.  To me, there was nothing wrong to regret.”

I sat bolt upright, like he’d electrified me rather than said those words.

“Regret!  Regret what?  Don’t you remember - nothing like that happened!”

I looked down at him, and he said nothing..  I reached up to the overhead light in the cab’s ceiling and turned it on, making him blink at the sudden light in his face.  A horrible moment passed before he collected himself.

“They said it did.”

I flushed with anger,  “Yes, of course ‘they’ said it did!  I was _framed!_  They lied!  Don’t you remember?  Please say you don’t think that really happened!  You were only fourteen! I would never!”

His expression faltered and he looked away from me.  “I don’t really know what happened any more.”

I shrank back, pressing myself against the door, trying not to touch him.

“Are you saying you have _memories_ of something happening?”

He squirmed.  “I...not really.  I guess they could just be fantasies that they made me think were memories.  I don’t know, Bulma.” He glanced back at me, looking guilty, and I was winded by a loss I never saw coming.  We’d both been so damaged by what Illuminary Inc and the military had done, and the one person I thought I could count on really knowing the truth of what happened, didn’t.  I tried to speak, and found sobs coming out instead. I really shouldn’t have had those last couple of drinks.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

I tried again, forcing the words out messily through my tears.  “Will you believe me now when I tell you that it didn’t happen? That I’m not a pedophile?  Vegeta, I have no reason to lie to you about that if it was true!”

“Okay.  I believe you.”

I couldn’t see his face - my eyes were all scrunched up and blurry with tears.  He let me cry it out for a minute or two, until I started to get myself under control again.  

“So they ruined your life for just trying to help me?” he asked softly.

I nodded, upset all over again that he hadn’t seemed to have realized that.

“I’m sorry,” he said, almost whispering it.  His hand found mine under the duvet and squeezed it.  I wanted to hold tight to that moment of contact, but let his hand go as he pulled it away again.  I needed to get through this on my own, and he was my charge, not my protector.

He reached up and turned the overhead light off.

 


	7. Illuminary Inc - 2133

**CHAPTER SEVEN: ILLUMINARY INC 2133**

 

_ “Good morning, Miss Briefs,” Zarbon drawls as Corporal Cui forces me into the metal seat.  I sneer at Zarbon. He’s making a joke out of my situation, and it makes me hate him even more. _

_ “Not good enough,” I tell him.  “You didn’t choke to death on breakfast - I’m disappointed.” _

_ Zarbon laughs.  Cui holds my arm brutally tight, and then I feel the sting and spreading warmth from the syringe he stuck me with. _

_ “You’re a real hoot when you’re sober.  It’s a shame to use the serum on you; it makes you terribly docile, but you’re so susceptible to it, I’d be a fool not to.  Ah, look, at that smile - you’re getting comfortable already. Now continue, if you would, the tale of how you infiltrated Illuminary Inc.”   _

...

The next morning I wrapped my finger in a bandage and told Mrs Perez I had cut myself on a paring knife while eating an apple on the sofa, and apologized for the blood stains.  Then I went out and applied for a bunch of kitchen hand, front-of-house, and cafe jobs. It wasn’t what I’d envisioned doing with my PhD, but what Bardock had told me the night before had made me too scared to go home.  On one hand, I couldn’t believe my own father could be involved in some kind of nefarious, unethical experiments on enslaved human beings. On the other, if Bardock was correct, and he had no reason I could think of to lie, my father was the enemy of Bardock, Gine, and Goku.  Perhaps he had even been responsible for turning Goku in. They had never met, but it was too much of a coincidence to ignore. I couldn't bring myself to live in the same house as him again, with how things lay.

I used some of my savings to pay my first two weeks in a room share in downtown Westwood, with people my own age for once.  They had very different concerns than I, but we soon shared such concerns as who had drunk the last of the milk, how to clean the floors when none of us could afford a vacuum cleaner, and if we could collectively cover next weeks rent.  

My quality of life took a nosedive.  My mother had made sure I could cook, but I had only been taught to cook like a gourmet with the best ingredients, not how to get all the nutrition I needed on forty dollars a week.  I was nervous, jumpy and jittery, probably not aided by all the coffee I had to make in my training week at the cafe. At the same time, I was applying for various jobs related to my field and receiving no requests for interviews.  After four weeks of living like this I was staring into an abyss of realization. I had a doctorate in developmental psychology, but I still felt like I was a child, with no idea how to take care of myself, what the world was truly like, or how hard life was at the bottom.  I had no clue of how to move forward in my life.

But then Bardock returned.

He had called on Mrs Perez and obtained my new address from her, after she confirmed with me that I wished this “tall, rough looking man,” to know where I now lived.  And then he had shown up at the apartment, causing a titter amongst my roommates and some speculation when I took him directly to my room.

“You said you were a psychologist, right?” he asked with no preamble.

“Yes.”  My heart was pounding with adrenaline just from his being there.  He stirred both hope and fear in me.

He pulled a ragged looking display from his back pocket, unrolled it and passed it to me.  It was a job listing posted that afternoon for a developmental psychologist...at Illuminary Inc.

“You need to apply for this.”  He didn’t need to tell me why.

“I don’t think I will get it though,” I admitted, my hope fading again as I glanced through the job requirements.

“You have to.”

“I’ll try, but I don’t have any experience outside the university.”

“You’ll get it,” he insisted. 

I reread the job posting.  Experience in clinical studies was required, which I had, and in one on one interaction with subjects, which I had very little of.  A bigger picture mentality - I wondered what that was. They also wanted either military, police, or private sector experience.

“I’d be lying if I said I was what they are asking for.”

“Then lie,” he told me.  “What is lying a little to a company whose nature itself is a lie?  You want to help get Goku and Gine free, right?”

I nodded,  He had a point.  I didn’t see how lies would work, but I may as well try.

“You would also get the perfect reference from your father.”

I was struck cold to the heart.  Go to my father?

“Would it be, though?  He’s a bioengineer, not a psychologist, and he works for the military.  Would anyone at Illuminary Inc even know who he was?”

“He works for the Weapons Research Unit.  I told you, they’re practically the same thing.”

“I shouldn’t know that, though.”

“If you already do, maybe it will make them more likely to hire you, to keep you in the secret, yeah?”

I covered my face with my hands and sat down on my bed.  “Maybe.” Would my father get in trouble? Did I care? Did I care about lying to liars?  To get my friend back?

“Okay, I’ll do it.”

“Good.”

He stood up and took the display from me, as if to go already.

“Wait, Bardock!  The job is in Victorville - how are we going to keep in contact?  Can you get a wristband or something?”

He paused.  “I don’t think so.  We could meet up at an arranged point.  A predetermined time.”

“Is there something halfway?”

“I can’t do halfway - I have to come on foot.  It takes a full day of walking just to get here from the South East.”

“Okay.  I guess once I have this job I should be able to afford the car trip.”  I took the display from him again and looked for the compensation range.  It was offering way more than any job I had applied for yet. Yes, a long car trip should be well within reach.  “Do you know that hill that overlooks the ruins of old Downtown?”

“You mean Elysian Park?  The Wilders go through there all the time.  It would be better for me.”

“There’s one spot that has a particularly good view.”

“I think I know which place you mean.”

“We could meet there.  Sunday after next. I’ll tell you if I get a job interview or not.”

...

The next day I called my parents.  Or more specifically my mother.

“Can I come visit you, Mom?  I want to talk to Dad about something, and-”

“Of course!  Yes, Sweetie!  We’ve missed you!  I was so looking forward to you staying with us for a while when you finished your doctorate, but then you went and got that place in Westwood.  I have got to visit sometime! I’d like to come into LA and go shopping - we can make a day of it!”

The car was sent on Sunday morning, and I was at their dining table for lunch.  We chit chatted about my job and my apartment’s inmates, while I picked at the amazing pizza my mother had made.  My father was all smiles, but I was hard pressed to return them. I was tired, too, having stayed up late reworking and embellishing my resume.

“How’s the job hunting going?” he asked.  “You haven’t resigned yourself to a life of hospitality yet, I hope.”

“It’s funny you should ask,” I said, toying with my display under the table.  “I have a job I want to apply for, and I want you to be a reference for it.”

His smile wavered.  “I’d love to, princess, but I’m not sure how it would help.  We’re hardly in the same industry, after all.”

“I know.  But...the job is at Illuminary Inc.”

He flinched, his face draining of color almost as much as Professor Gohan’s had when Goku electrocuted him.  I felt my nervousness spike into nausea. I didn't know what he knew, but he knew  _ something _ .

“I can't help you there, Bulma.  I don't know anyone at Illuminary Inc.”

“Are you sure?”

“I'm sure.  I don't know what would give you the impression that I did.”

“I thought I heard somewhere that Illuminary Inc and the Weapons Research Unit were linked.”

His eyes cut over to mom’s for an instant before answering me.  She sat very still, her attention completely on him as he said, “That doesn’t sound likely, but then again, I wouldn’t know.  I do know some people at the Weapons Research Unit - we are all military researchers and developers, so we have some connection.  But I hadn’t heard of any link to Illuminary Inc.” He gave a chuckle. “That’s a power company!”

“I know.”

“Where did you hear such a thing, anyway?”

“I can’t remember,” I answered lamely, dropping my eyes to my half empty plate.  I wanted to believe that Bardock was mistaken, that he’d only seen my father because he was an occasional visitor to WRU, but I couldn’t stand to look my father in the eye any longer.  An uncomfortable silence descended.

“Why would you want to work at a power company, anyway?” he asked.

“To help the Saiyan kids.”

“Since when have you been interested in Saiyan kids?” he asked.  I could hear his surprise.

I shrugged.  “I’ve just been thinking.  Don’t you wonder what it’s like for them?  They’re born in a lab without parents. Or the freedom of normal kids.  It must affect them.”

“But I didn’t think you were interested in therapy as a career.”

“I changed my mind.  It’s not therapy, anyway - it sounds more like an advisement role.”

“Well, you don't want to work there, anyway.  It's outside of Victorville - not the nicest of places.”

“We'll see.”

“Bulma,” my mother interrupted.  “You know, I think I might be able to borrow my friend's horse this afternoon.  We could go riding together! What do you think?”

I struggled to compute the question, my mind still on how I was going to get a reference worth a damn for my resume.  

“Sounds, great, Mom.”

“Lovely!  I'll call her right now!”

It was a relief in fact to spend the afternoon with my mother, and her lighthearted talk about her beloved Crackers and the neighbors, or at least it was until the inevitable thought occured that maybe she knew more than she was letting on, too.  As we walked the horses back up the hill through the trees, I decided to ask her.

“Mom, do you know anything about the Weapons Research Unit?”

“Me?  No! I’ve heard you father mention it now and then, but that’s all.  And I gave up asking him what he works on years ago. He’s so tight-lipped.”

She replied in such her usual tone that I had no reason to suspect her.  Then again, my mother was not nearly as dumb as her shallow manner implied.

I helped her cook dinner, and when Dad came down to eat it I let the conversation follow its usual routes, though I felt hard pressed to act normal, and was sure it must show.

After dinner my father disappeared while my mom and I went to the lounge and made use of their new, terribly elegant lounge suite.  My mother’s expensive taste was stamped all over the house.

“You don’t seem very happy, dear,” she observed.

‘Oh.  Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.  You must still be upset by what happened with your friends.”

“Yes,” I said, glad for the excuse to be provided.  “I miss them every day.”

“Oh.  I had hoped that those new roommates would fill up your days and help you get over them.”

I held back the snappish retort about getting over missing friends not being like getting over the flu, and my father came bustling into the room holding an unfurled display in front of him.

“Look here,” he said.  “The Chicago Elementary School Association is funding some research into immersive learning environments, and they’re looking for developmental psychologists to lead it.”  He dropped the display in my hands.

“That’s great,” I said, unconvincingly.

“I could give you a character reference for the application, if you like, but you’d probably be better off asking your grandmother.  She probably knows people on the board, or if she doesn’t she’ll know who they answer to. And you could stay with her until you get set up.”

Well, if I hadn’t been disinterested to start with, that would have killed any enthusiasm.  I disliked Chicago for its ostentatious displays of wealth, and the unrelenting posturing and powerplay of the circles of the city’s elite.  Money and connections were the lubrication that kept the Super State’s richest city churning, and my grandmother was Chicago, through and through.  My grandfather had been no better, and I liked him even less, as he had never had much to say to me. He was dead now, but my grandmother was still kicking, wielding the collected powers of her connections and massed wealth in the endless game.  Though she was affectionate enough, her stated aim with me was to “better me”, which mostly consisted of criticizing my upbringing and casting veiled aspersions about my mother’s life choices. She probably  _ could  _ get me placed in some plum position, but then I’d be expected to join her web of intrigue, and have my haircut, clothing, and deportment critiqued on a regular basis.

“No thanks.  I want to stand on my own two feet.  And I don’t really want to live in Chicago.  But I will take your character reference for my other applications.”

His enthusiasm faded and he frowned at me.

“You’re not still thinking of applying at Illuminary Inc, are you?”

“I don’t see why not.  Victorville doesn’t scare me.  I don’t have to live there if it sucks.”

“Bulma,” he sighed.  “You don’t want to work at Illuminary Inc.  It’s not a good place. I’ve not heard good things.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Like...it’s not a good environment.  I don’t think it’s the right environment for you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re my daughter!” he said, deliberately misunderstanding.  “I do not want you mixed up in that company. Just trust me when I say that it’s best avoided!”

I could feel myself turning red with anger at his evasive replies.  “Maybe I want to find out for myself? Especially when you’re not exactly providing solid reasons!”

He threw his hands in the air.  “Bulma! Do not push this!”

My mother gasped, and my father stalked back out of the room.  It was the angriest I’d ever seen him, so unlike his usual laid-back self, and it quite shook me, despite my own anger.

“I’ll go talk to him,” my mother said, getting up from the chaise and hurrying after him.

I waited for five minutes then got up and made my way to “my” bedroom, passing the study where I could hear the faintest muffled sounds of their talking.

...

On Monday morning I stayed in bed until I was sure my father had left for work.  I was stuck at the house until the evening when he bought the car home, but at least I would avoid him until then.  

“I spoke to your father,” my mother announced as soon as I showed myself in the kitchen.  “I think you should consider apologizing to him so the two of you can make up. He’s only trying to protect you from a bad situation.”

“Without actually telling me what the situation is.”

“Well, sometimes there are very good reasons why things shouldn’t be shared.”

_ Yeah, like the fact that Illuminary Inc is a shady psuedo-company run by the military _ , I thought.

“Your father and I have never placed any great restrictions on you - in fact, I think we were a bit loose with you sometimes - and so the one time we do, I’d hope you’d listen.  Your father knows this is a bad place. I think you’d be foolish to disobey him this once.”

“I’m twenty, not six.”

“You’re still our daughter, and we still love you.  Now, what would you like to do today? Tansy Heartwright organizes a movie afternoon every Monday, so I thought we could go to that.”

My mother never liked things to get too intense, and I was glad of the change of subject.  “Okay. I’m going to keep job hunting this morning, though. Do you think Dad would mind if I used the study?”

“Of course not, and it’s my study, too, remember?  I use it more than he does!”

In reality I wanted to finalize my resume for the Illuminary Inc application and send it in.  I had a reference from my thesis supervisor, Dr Loaf, and another from another Psych doctor who finished their doctorate a year ahead of me, which I would have to use in lieu of my father’s.  But when I went to start up the workstation I found it already on and logged in.

My father had left his verified personal email account open in a tab.

I had an idea.

My hands got sweaty and my heart beat fast as I considered committing a fraudulent act against my own father.  What could I do? It was all risky, but…

I went to the password settings and clicked “reset password”.  It asked me to enter the old password. I opened a new window, logged into a darknet server, and began trawling through websites and chatrooms for a password cracking app.  I only knew how to do it because my roommate’s girlfriend had given a demonstration a week or so ago. She was a communications major, and was always bragging about the places she had hacked.  Even so, it took me hours to find what I was after. When I finally found one my mother called from downstairs, “Bulma, lunch is ready!”

“Coming!”

I downloaded and installed it, then ran it against the password field, minimized the window and then went down for lunch.  By the time lunch was over, it had cracked it. I wrote it down on my display, closed the window without resetting the password, uninstalled the app, and went out to watch a movie with my mom.

That evening when my father got home from work, we ate a quick dinner before I was bundled into the car to be driven home.  I couldn’t bring myself to apologize for pressing him about the reference, or about Illuminary Inc, and my heart felt heavy with guilt, but I stepped up the acting.  I talked about the interesting afternoon my mother and I had had at her friend’s house, and my first ever margarita, and the hilarious movie, and I could tell he was soon at ease again.

As I pressed the button to open the door on his company car, though, he said, “You’ve changed your mind about working at Illuminary Inc, right?  Your mom said she talked to you about it.”

“Oh, yeah, no, I won’t,” I said, sliding into the seat without meeting his gaze.  “Not if it’s as bad as you say it is.”

“Good, Bulma.  I’m glad.”

...

For a day I did nothing with the password except log into his email and watch the comings and goings of his inbox, and read the last year’s worth of his undeleted emails.  There was a sad lack of anything personal - it was all online orders, community meeting minutes, and bills. It wasn’t his work email, and there was no indication in any of his correspondence of what he did on a day to day basis, but at last, deep in his archive, I turned up a copy of an electronic contract.  It was an amendment of his title to Senior Research Associate at the Weapons Research Unit. I felt sick when I read it - it was confirmation that he had lied to me, lied to my face.

The next shock was that it was signed by Dr Trunks Briefs.  He was a  _ doctor  _ of bioengineering.  And I’d never known.  He’d never told me. I knew he’d left university after his Masters, and he’d never been back to a university.  How had he gotten a doctorate? When? I was starting to feel like I didn’t know him at all, like my whole life was a lie.  How much did Mom know? More than me, apparently! What could I be sure of anymore?

I was compelled to go on, despite my tears and rising panic.  I considered asking my roommate’s girlfriend if she could help me set some sort of proxy spoof up, but then I decided that I didn’t want anyone else interfering in my family’s business, nor knowing about my own criminal behavior.

Instead I set up a new anonymous email account on the darkweb.  Then I searched for contact points at Illuminary Inc and confirmed the domain name that any emails would be coming from.  Then I set up an email filter on my father’s account to send any email from that domain to go straight to trash, marked as read, and to forward a copy to my new email address.  And then I saved the filter as “Junk filter - Old”, hoping that if my father checked his filters in the next couple of weeks he would not think this strange.

I added my father’s name as a referee to my resume, his title and email address, and hoped and prayed that they used that one and not call him directly if they had access to his number.  Then I sent it to the Illuminary Inc recruiter.

I waited a number of hours, putting in my shift at the cafe with a knot in my stomach the whole time, and then I came home, locked the door to my bedroom, sat at the workstation, checked my father’s email inbox and trash, and settled in to write an email from his account.  Putting myself in the mind of someone who was hiring a psychologist to work with child slaves, after much labor I came up with this,:

_ To: Cassandra Price - Head of Recruitment, Illuminary Inc. _

_ From: Dr Trunks Briefs _

_ Subject: Applicant Bulma Briefs _

_ Hello, Cassandra, _

_ I’m writing to you as my daughter, Dr Bulma Briefs, has applied for the role of advisory psychologist at Illuminary Inc, something I am very happy about.  As you have no doubt seen on her resume, I wish to provide a character reference for her. I am the Senior Research Associate at the Weapons Research Unit, based in Barstow.  As you must know, the WRU and Illuminary Inc are enmeshed to a great degree, and so before my daughter is discounted for her age and relative inexperience, I’d like to offer my perspective on her as a candidate from my position of knowing what she will be dealing with. _

_ I offer this, not with the intention of falsely bolstering my daughter’s chances of impressing you to hire her, but as a favor to you, as I can’t imagine a person more suited to the demands this job will place on her. _

_ Bulma is a remarkably smart doctor of developmental psychology, having gained her doctorate at only age twenty, and has been considering offers to become a member of faculty at several universities.  However, her heart does not lie in academia but in serving her country. Growing up as she did under my influence, and always in proximity to the military and secret research, she wishes to serve her country in a similar manner.  It was I that pushed her in the direction of Illuminary Inc as an opportunity to serve in such a way, though of course I never mentioned the closeness of our two organizations. She is incredibly professional, I am told, and is a true believer in psychology as a science and a tool to an end.  She sees the larger picture and is very cognitive that the benefit of the majority must come before the liberties of a few. Young though she is, you will not find a cooler or more level head. Her precociousness has lent her a maturity not even necessarily present in a woman twice her age. _

_ Furthermore, her doctoral thesis is highly relevant to your institution’s business.  She made an extensive study on how development on adolescents is impacted by environment and isolation. _

_ Bulma is the perfect fit for the Illuminary Inc mold, and will do great work with the utmost discretion and dedication to higher the principles of the SSA. _

_ Feel free to contact me on this address to talk further. _

_ Dr Trunks Briefs _

_ Senior Research Associate, Weapons Research Unit. _

 

It could go wrong in so many ways.  What if the recruiter wanted to talk by phone?  What if they found a way to contact my father at work?  What if this faked case of nepotism actually backfired and cost me the job instead of got it for me?  Only one way to find out - by hitting send.

Instead I stared at it for hours, rereading the outrageous lies over and over and playing with the phrases.  Somehow, doing so made me appreciate for the first time what I might be getting in to. I might be forced to play a part I found despicable for the chance to find my friend.  Would I be able to stomach it? Bardock’s unsettling stare jumped to my mind. What damage had been wrought on him? Then I thought of Goku’s grinning face, a boy on the verge of being a man, and tears squeezed from the corners of my eyes.  What was  _ he  _ going through now?  His happy existence had been ripped from him, and it had been my fault.

I pressed send.

...

I felt like I aged thirty years overnight.  I barely slept and turned up at the cafe half asleep.  This changed the moment I got my first message buzzing on my wristband.  I came to full, electrified alertness with such a jump that I overturned a coffee in its saucer.  I left the mess on the floor with no explanation to my co workers as I rushed to the bathroom to whip out my display and check the message.  It was only my roommate asking me if I’d be going grocery shopping with them tonight.

The rest of the day I passed in a state of agitation, while the other cafe workers guessed that I had the shits, or morning sickness, but it wasn’t until the next day that my hypervigilance paid off.   

 

_ To: Dr Briefs Trunks _

_ From: Cassandra Price - Head of Recruitment, Illuminary Inc. _

_ Subject: Re: Applicant Bulma Briefs _

_ Thank you for your email, Dr Trunks.  In light of your personal endorsement of Bulma, we have decided that an interview is warranted.  The job will go, of course, to the best candidate, but I admit that Illuminary Inc is both intrigued and reassured by an endorsement from someone so preeminent in our wider Saiyan research circle. _

_ Regards _

_ Cassandra _

 

I logged into my father’s email account and deleted the message from the trash, Then checked my own email address and found a request for an interview from the same woman.  Afterwards I was able to eat a proper meal without my stomach shirking from it for the first time in days.

My nerves returned though, in the days before the interview.  I went shopping, and without even my mother’s interference, bought an expensive, tight fitting business skirt, tailored blouse, and high heels.  On the Sunday before, I rode my bike to the base of Elysian Park hill - funny that I’d never known it had a name. Or maybe it was only a name that the Wilders used.  Then I walked up and waited, suddenly feeling anxious that Bardock wouldn’t come, that he’d been caught, or that we had been thinking of different spots. I had a backpack full of food for us to share when, or if, he showed up, and I sat watching the ruins, crying again.  This was almost like one of my adventures with Goku, but so, so different. 

It was nearly an hour past our scheduled time when I heard the rustle of someone coming up through the brush, and I panicked and hid in the bushes on the opposite side of the clearing, but it was Bardock.  He looked tired.

“Where have you been?” I squealed as I jumped back out.  He clutched at his heart at the shock.

“Jeez, girl!  I was on a gathering mission last night, and it took more out of me than I expected.”  He sat down heavily on a crumbled concrete curb. “Did you get the job?”

“Not yet,” I said.  “But I got an interview.”

He nodded.  “Good.”

I stood next to him, looking down at him in frustration, aware that I was hurt in some way.  “You’re not even going to ask how I managed it?” 

“How did you manage it?”

“I had to hack my own father’s email!”  Suddenly I was crying again, and I let loose, telling him how I had confirmed my father’s lies, and how it had destroyed me.  How near to sick I’d been over it. Bardock kept silent throughout while I paced back and forth in the dirt before him.

“And you’re the only person in the world that I can speak to about it!” I concluded, realizing it was true.  I was alone in this with this strange... _ Saiyan _ .  Maybe he realized it, too, because he got up and patted me heavily on the shoulder.

“I’m sorry, kid.  I guess it must royally suck to find out something like that.  Come on, sit down and we can talk about it properly.”

I remembered the snacks I’d brought, and we shared them while I told him how I had gotten into and abused my father’s verified email.  He ate with a gusto that was very reminiscent of his son, so I let him have most of it.

“Wow, you and Goku sure can pack it away,” I observed.

“Saiyans have to eat more than a normal person,” he told me.  “We metabolize it too fast. If you put us on the same diet as a normal person we’d be in trouble pretty fast.  So, what is a verified email? Is it different from a normal email?”

I hadn’t realized that he might not know.  But then, he didn’t really live in a world of emails and paying bills.

“It’s a government issued email address under a person’s real name, and there’s one for every citizen.  It gets used for anything where your identity needs to be reasonably ensured. Like major purchases or setting up bank accounts, that kind of thing.”

“Ah.  I get it.  And when’s the interview?”

My stomach curled back up into a ball.

“Tomorrow.”

...

Illuminary Inc sent a car for me.

I arranged for it to pick me up from the salon where I was having my hair put up in a do so precise and severe that it put five years on me, which it was meant to.

“Don’t you like it?” asked the hairdresser when she was done, seeing my dead-eyed demeanor.

“No, I do!” I assured her, flashing a smile.  “It’s exactly what I asked for!” I dropped the smile the instant she looked away - my hair was so tight that moving my cheeks hurt my scalp.

I’d had the foresight to wear a t-shirt and change into my blouse in the car on the way there; my armpits were pools by the time the car rolled through Victorville.  My father was right - the town didn’t look like much. It was very rundown, and parts of it looked very old, but it did have a center with shops and most amenities you might expect, plus a bunch of pedestrians milling around it, or even just sitting down on the sidewalk, looking like they had no particular place to be.  The mountains were distant cut out shapes, and the place was unrelentingly flat. The buildings were low to the ground, the trees, such as there were, were short, and the roads were wide and dusty.

About a mile North of town the car turned down an unmarked sideroad and drove at speed down the stretch, the white blob of a shape at the end resolving into a large building, most of it two stories and without windows, but with a stout tower of about five stories at the front corner that had plenty.

There was a perimeter wall for us to negotiate first; a fortress-like sheer concrete slab, fifteen feet high, painted white and topped with decorative, but no doubt effective, white spikes.  The only signage was Illuminary Inc’s logo painted on the gate - a circle bisected vertically by a strand of DNA. The car rolled to a stop at an automated sentry post, and I waved the visitor’s pass I had been given, had my face scanned, and waited for permission to enter.  This took enough time to make my cortisol levels spike again, but then the gates opened and the car slid up to the entryway.

The area outside the building was made up into a green and tidy formal garden, in contrast to the general messy scrub and dirt outside the walls.  Before I stepped out of the car I tried to conjure again the arrogant Bulma of yesteryear, who knew she was amazing, and could conquer and achieve anything.  I rolled my shoulders back, sat up straighter, checked my lipstick on a face I barely recognized as mine and said, “They’d be fucking lucky to hire me!” I glared into my own eyes in the mirror on the back of the front seat, forcing the fear to retreat.  I felt my disgust with Illuminary Inc well up to take its place. I was above these people. They were not worthy to kiss the ground I walked on. I was cleverer than they were, and I would dupe them. I stuffed the timid, scared Bulma back in the box for now.

Then I got out of the car, and strutted as best I could into Illuminary Inc.  I should have practiced with the shoes some more, but boy did they make me feel tall and ready to kick some proverbial.

...

“Now, Miss Briefs, we notice you don’t have any qualifications in therapeutic psychology.  Would you describe yourself as more...results focused or people focused?”

I looked at the Head of Care, a man called Nick Flitch.  He did not seem like my first choice of someone to turn to for care.  Then I looked at Dr Kelly Wright, the Head of Saiyan Research, who sat next to him.  At the end of the glossy white table was the recruitment woman, Cassandra. Cassandra was doing most of the talking, but I knew it was these other two I needed to impress.  They were being very reserved in their expression and words, and it made me nervous. I was trying to walk a tightrope between pleasing them and seeming like the kind of woman who was okay with children spending their lives imprisoned.  They had already quizzed me extensively on my thesis, my feelings about confidentiality, and how comfortable I might be with a certain amount of control of my life relinquished to the company. I was to open my social media accounts to them before they would hire me, and should I be hired I had to agree to a very restrictive NDA and regular review of my social media accounts.  Luckily I had already purged anything that referred to Goku, Gohan, Krillin, or Gine, and along with everything that could be considered too out of character for the persona I was constructing. I had even bought a new wristband from a different provider, and changed my number. I couldn’t have Illuminary Inc snooping into my past.

“I can be results focused if my employer wants results.  Or I can be more people focused if that is what is called for.”

Nick didn’t react at all, and Dr Wright leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table.  

“We are not looking for a traditional therapist, which ninety percent of those who applied for this job are,” she said with some shade of exasperation.  “We are after someone who is interested in helping our charges be the best that they can. A certain distance from the subjects is necessary.”

So, they wanted an ice queen.

“That is quite all right with me.  I am not interested in therapy, and prefer distance.  I’m used to interacting with children and adolescents as subjects and as data.  I will always have my eye on what is working, and what is not working. Individuals are not really my scope.  To be honest, the science is what motivates me. That and the thought of contributing to something larger than myself.”

The Care guy gave an almost imperceptible nod of his head, and Cassandra noted something on her display.

“Do you have any younger siblings?” he asked out of the blue.

“No,” I replied, and blinked.  What was that about?

He nodded again.  “And are you considering having children at some point in the future?”

I looked at him in shock before I mastered myself.  It was meant to be illegal to ask such a question. But should I expect a secretly government-owned company to be standing by the government’s own laws?

He hedged.  “I ask because there is a potential risk of in-utero deformity when you work closely with these Saiyan children.  Electrical fields and so on.”

“Oh.  Well.”  I didn’t believe that was the reason at all.  “No. I’ve never considered having children, and I don’t think I ever shall.  I don’t think motherhood is for me. I’m not a...nurturing type.”

Cassandra made another note on her display, and I left the interview without any idea of how I’d done.

Two days later I got the call offering me the job.

“Though your lack of experience was a concern to us at first,” Dr Wright explained, “eventually we came to see it as an advantage.  You have the attitude we’re looking for, and we are impressed by your thesis work. It will be good to have someone stepping in who doesn’t bring with them preconceived notions of how we should conduct our business.”

...

My first day was a week and a half later.  I packed up my boxes once more, and selected a free standing house in one of the nicer parts of Victorville.  It was outrageous, after living in a single bedroom for years, to suddenly have a whole house to myself. It had two bedrooms and a study, and perhaps I would have picked smaller, but there was no such thing as a stylish loft or luxurious studio in Victorville.  To get anything of acceptable quality I had to go all the way up to a house.

Setting my things up in the house was initially exciting, then terribly depressing.  I hadn’t and wouldn’t tell my parents where I was and what I was doing. As far as they were concerned I was still working in the cafe in Westwood.  And my roommates, though they showed concern and interest in my moving, were noticeably unforthcoming with promises to visit. Perhaps that was for the best, in the end.  In Victorville, where I was told many employees of the plant lived, I would have to inhabit my new role as the heartless research psychologist full time. 

So it was alone that I bought my first ever set of silverware.  My first mugs. My first bed. I set the bed up in the living room at first, as it turned out I didn’t have enough money to buy lounge furniture until my first payday.  About that point I gave up on improvement of the place. The house was neat, but the decor was twenty years out of fashion, and there were some maintenance issues. The yard was plain dirt - not a living thing to fuss over.  My last task of Sunday night was to go through and sign the waivers and non-disclosure agreements that Illuminary Inc had sent over. The NDA’s had me sweating. The penalty for breaking it was to be liable for up to the full loss of Illuminary Inc’s earnings - a ridiculous sum that was likely to be in the billions.  I barely understood the waiver that asked me to dispense with some of the rights I had come to expect in life. I probably needed the advice of a lawyer before signing either of them, and they would probably tell me not to, but signing these things was the only way I was going to be allowed in the front door on Monday.

That weekend before I started at Illuminary Inc was the loneliest of my life until that point.

On the Monday morning I was picked up by a company car, and shared a ride to the facility with several others who lived in the same suburb.  They were curious about me, and introduced themselves. I was caught between the natural impulse to make friends and try and put people on my side, and my ignorance of how an ice cold bitch would react to that situation.  I ended up answering their questions as briefly as possible, then staring out of the window.

It began with an orientation of the facility, and some education on Saiyans.

A facilities coordinator called Carla showed me around the front, tower section with the windows.  It was the administrative block, and housed all the big wigs, financial officers, Human Resources, Saiyan Resources, staff canteen, conference rooms, and that kind of thing.  Then I was taken down to the four wings of the diamond shaped facility. Each wing faced inwards on a large central courtyard, though it wasn’t possible to see from one side to the other from ground level, due to a zig-zagging baffle that ran down the center of the of the yard and out to the corners.  The view out of the first wing though showed a delightfully green and shaded Japanesque garden with ponds, carp, stepping stones, bamboo, pagoda, and benches for the staff to relax on. No Saiyans though.

“This wing holds the genetic research division, always cooking up new strains to try,” Carla told me in a off-hand way, though I got the impression she was watching closely for my reaction.  She was a black woman, at least twice as old as me, and her vibe was playful, but in a way that made me feel like I was the plaything, not the playmate. “It also holds the fertility and implantation clinic, delivery suite, and incubation.”

“What do you mean by implantation?” I asked.  “What is getting implanted?”

“The zygotes - the fertilized eggs, of course.”

Of course.  Yes, someone had to gestate the Saiyans.  I saw the sparkle of amusement in the woman’s eyes and checked my expression back into polite interest.

“Who are the surrogates?” I asked.  “Local women?”

“Saiyans themselves, these days.  They used to use any old volunteers, but they found it’s better to keep it all in the family, so to speak.  Electric babies are kind of rough on a mother.”

She led me past glass fronted genetics labs, where hair-netted techs played with vials and slides, or else were crouched over displays full of data.  Then she took me into an empty implantation room, which looked like a clinic room at a very flash hospital. 

Lastly we stopped outside the glass walls of the darkened incubation rooms.  It wasn’t just rows of babies in cribs like I expected. There were half a dozen babies in plastic hardshell cribs, but there were also others suspended in plastic sacks of clear pinkish fluid, ranging in size from newborn down to a pitiful creature the size on an avocado.  For a second I was horrified, thinking that they were dead babies preserved in formaldehyde, but then I saw one kick and wriggle, and I jumped in shock. My guide laughed.

“Creepy as fuck, huh?” she said.

“Are they...still  _ gestating? _ ”

“Yeah.  They call it ‘wet incubation.’  The doctors whip them out at twenty four weeks or so.  Easier for the surrogate, and less attachment issues.”

“And they don’t want them to get attached because…?”  I knew this sounded like a lack of imagination on my part, but I really just wanted to see how Carla would handle the question.

She cocked a brow.  “A Saiyan child is not a normal child, and you’ll see that when we go through to the second wing.”

We watched for a few minutes longer.  A nurse in a full body suit of baggy, heavy looking white fabric gently palpitated the sack one of the babies floated in, exciting it to move its little limbs.  Another lifted a newborn out of a crib and sat down to feed it from a bottle.

_ At least there’s that much care _ , I told myself with a shudder.   _ They could just be feeding them through a nasogastric tube _ .

The next wing was the nursery and generator rooms.

Like everything I had seen so far at Illuminary Inc, the facilities were spotless, modern, and pleasing to the eye.  But looking in on the nursery, with its lines of identical pale wooden cribs and hanging mobiles, even seeing how light and pretty the room was, with nursing chairs and a view out onto a tree-shaded toddlers playarea, I struggled to keep down my anger.  It looked like the most perfect orphanage ever created, but it was still an orphanage, and one that hadn’t needed to exist until the children were bred to populate it. I wondered if I would have felt so powerfully about it before I had found out about Goku’s true origins, or heard Bardock’s story.  The Bulma I had been had been rather more willing to accept the suffering of others she didn’t know and couldn’t see.

Here again, a nurse in a heavy white jumpsuit stalked the aisles to comfort crying children.  Even her head was covered, and her face was veiled by a stiff, fine mesh that projected several inches before her face.

“Is that suit what they use to protect the non-Saiyan staff from electric shock?”

“Yup.  Those carers have the patience of saints wearing those things all day, but I suppose you’ll get to try one for yourself, soon.”

We passed the nursery for the one to two year olds, which had more playspace, then three to four year olds, which was bigger again, though the children were not to be seen, except in glimpses through the far window, playing in the courtyard.

In the next grade of nursery, there were bedrooms with four beds apiece, their bedsheets in disarray.  A pair of little boy’s briefs decorated the center of the floor. I dug my fingernails into my palms to stop myself from reacting emotionally.  It seemed like I was feeling even worse about what I was seeing than I had expected. I cleared my throat.

“It will promote insecurity and distraction to have their beds in full view of a corridor,” I pointed out, in my best psychologist’s voice.

“One way mirrors,” Carla told me.  “They’re too young to work out they’re being watched.

“Hmm,” I said.  “I’m not sure how ethical it is to deny children that much privacy.  Anyone could be walking past, not just their caregivers.”

“Only nurses and researchers and facility staff.  And believe me, facilities staff are not the least bit interested in what four year olds get up to in their bedrooms at night.”

The bedrooms connected to a dining area with little tables and chairs, where a male carer was laying out plastic dishes full of enough ravioli in sauce to feed a grown man.  That room connected to a playroom that was in a chaos of toys, and then onto the next, which was a classroom, where the occupants now sat, squirming in their seats, their dark haired heads twisting this way and that while the teacher tried to command the interest of the class.  They looked to be between the ages of four and six, and there were twenty four of them, all showing their family resemblances with their dark brows and eyes and thick, black hair. Less expected was the variety of skin tones. Some were pale skinned like Goku, others were more tanned looking, like Bardock, but some were even darker skinned than that - burnished brown skin that spoke strongly of South Mediterranean or Middle Eastern, maybe even North African ancestry.

“They don’t look as alike as I thought they would,” I noted.  “All those skin tones.”

“The different strains of clones have different shades,” Carla said.  “By accident or design I don’t know, but it makes it easier to tell them apart.”

“Where did the Saiyans come from?” I asked.  Since Bardock’s first visitation I had started to wonder this.  I wasn’t sure if I expected an honest or accurate answer from this woman, but I asked it all the same.

“One couple.  The Saiyans are all clones and tweaks of five original siblings.  I expect you’ll hear a lot more about it this afternoon.”

A bright flash of a spark flew across the classroom, followed by a cascade of answering sparks - literal cracks of electricity arcing between the kids, or the classroom furniture, or the suit of their teacher.  I sucked in my breath in surprise, and Carla huffed in dry amusement.

“At that age, the sparks coming off those kids could kill you ten times over,” she told me.  “That’s why we wear the suits whenever we enter a habitat. Getting accidentally electrocuted to death by a child is kinda traumatizing to them, not to mention the deceased.  You’re going to get this drilled into you over and over in your first week, but I may as well christen you - do not, under any circumstance, go into a habitat without your suit and hood.”

“Do they produce less power as babies?”

“They do.  But by full term they can cause a normal human carrier to receive dangerously powerful electric shocks.”

“Hence the wet incubation.”

“That’s right.  And that’s why it’s safest to use a Saiyan as a surrogate.”

I wondered where these surrogates were coming from.  Were they volunteers? Doubtful.

“And the surrogates are reintegrated adults who have come back to volunteer their services?”

Carla looked mildly uncomfortable.  “I guess it’s something like that. To tell you the truth, I don’t have much to do with the surrogates in my role.”

I fixed on the tallest child - a boy who I was sure must be a younger version of Bardock.  I wondered if the same fate awaited this one as Bardock had suffered.

We moved on to the generator rooms in the third wing.  Here, the children had been allowed a modicum of privacy.  The bedrooms were upstairs and out of view. The windows looked on to a playroom in an absolute shambles, and a room with two wall panel TVs, and gaming equipment tangled on the floor.  The younger kids, and there were only three of them, were in one classroom having a lesson, and the older ones, again, only three that I could see, and all girls, were doing some sort of self-directed study in the classroom next door.  As we watched, the oldest girl reached out and tapped her plastic ruler gently on the top of the head of the girl in front of her. The second girl swatted it away. The first girl tapped again, and the second girl swatted again. Then the first girl said something that made the third girl laugh, and tapped her ruler on her classmate’s head a third time, and the second girl tore from her seat, rounding on the oldest girl and leaping into her with her fists raised.  School furniture tumbled over as the fight broke out, and the teacher next door looked up and rushed through the door that seperated the classrooms.

“Huh.  Let’s move on,” said Carla.

“Does that happen much?” I asked.

“That’s probably a question for the Care team.  Kids fight sometimes - all kids do. I wouldn’t think these ones are any worse than the average.”

We turned the corner that marked the entrance to the fourth wing.

“This is the research wing, for all research besides genetic.”

We passed some darkened rooms set up like medical clinics or observation rooms, and then another “habitat” that was occupied.  I stopped, looking in with surprise.

“You’re the new psychologist, right?” Carla asked.

“Yes.”

“I expect you’re going to be spending a lot of time in there.”

I swallowed.  I was here to find Goku, but in the meantime I would actually have to work with other kids.  Real kids who were also bound to whatever fate Illuminary Inc and the WRU determined for them.

The rest of the wing was offices and meeting rooms, and I was shown my own office on the second floor.  It looked inward, like all the other windows, and from up here I could see most of the courtyard. I could also see what I hadn’t been able to before - the mesh that enclosed the play areas of the nursery, and the mesh - and bars - that enclosed the play areas of the generator and research habitats.   _ Bars _ .  Even the trees that shaded the courtyards were untouchable to the children, as they grew from the zigs and zags of the center wall, but the bars and mesh ended just shy of them.

“Are the children not allowed to touch the trees?” I asked.

“No, because the trees wouldn’t survive the encounter,” said Carla, matter of factly.  "It may look harsh, but these blessed freaks can’t live safely outside special facilities like this.  They can’t have plants, they can’t have pets, they can’t go for walks in the fresh air, and that is a fact of life for them.”

...

I was shown to the cafeteria for lunch.  It was a nice space, and the food looked fresh and healthy.  I picked sushi and a table by the window. A few people looked up curiously as I passed, but most ignored me.  I saw one of the people I had shared the car with in the morning. She gave a curt nod of recognition and pointedly looked the other way.  But I didn’t want friends. It was better if I sat alone and ignored. Perhaps tomorrow I would eat in my office to avoid people all together.

The orientation continued in the afternoon.  A tech came to find me in my office and sorted me out with a username, password, and showed me how to use my wristband to expedite login.  My workstation was set up, with one panel and one clear holographic display that I wasn’t sure what I would ever use for, and then Dr Kelly came to call on me.

“How are you finding things so far?”

“Just fine.  It’s very nice grounds.”

“They are, aren’t they?  This is a very good place to work, even if the commute is a bore.”

“I’m only fifteen minutes away.”

“You’re living in Victorville?” she asked, her face horrified.  “Oh, don’t do that to yourself! Get a place in the hills, it’s much nicer.  Only the cleaning staff and lab techs live in Victorville!”

“I’ll look into it.”

“Good.  I want you to be happy here, and settle in.  Now, on your workstation, on your desktop you should find the ‘Welcome to Double I’ walkthrough.”

“Double I?”

She smiled.  “Just what we call the company around here.  Illuminary Inc is such a mouthful. So, in the walkthrough there are videos and reading material, and I expect that to take you the rest of the day to get through.  Then tomorrow morning we’ll have one of the care staff take you through some of the basics of interacting with Saiyans, and then I’ll brief you on your tasks here. Okay?”

“Sounds good.”

Her estimate was accurate.

I watched the videos, which covered a lot that I already knew, plus the fact that all the Saiyans descended from one woman, the originator of the genetic mutation, called Radishya Atiyeh, and her husband Michael Saiya.  The photo that came with this image showed a young woman smiling at the camera, very pretty, with light brown skin and dark hair. A good looking white man with brown hair had his arm around her shoulders and was smiling in a more reserved way.  I recognized something of Goku and especially Bardock in each of them. Her compelling eyes and thick, riotous hair. His strong jaw and cheekbones.

“Radishya and Michael were unable to cope with raising their unique offspring,” the voice over told me.  “The children were taken to be raised in a specially designed house gifted by a generous benefactor, where they could be safely fed, housed, and monitored.  Later, realizing the potential of the Saiyan children’s gift, the benefactor formed a small research group that was the origin of today’s Illuminary Inc. With the permission of Radishya and Michael, the research group took samples of each child’s DNA and began the first round of cloning experiments.”

Video clips and photographs accompanied this showing smiling children sitting together on a bench, chatting with a suited adult and having cheek swabs taken.  I wondered why they hadn’t named the “generous benefactor”.

“Within eight years, this dedicated research and development team had created the first Saiyan-powered generator.  Illuminary Inc was officially incorporated, and the energy crisis that had so impeded manufacture after the war was solved virtually overnight.”

I went home in the evening, my head full of company propaganda and dire threats about the consequences of violating the sanctity of intellectual property.  I picked up takeout from the Indian place around the corner from me, but I found eating, sitting on my bed in the living room too depressing. Instead, I opened the sliding door and sat on the step, watching the blue sky fading through the purples and pinks of dusk, the dirt of my rented yard fading into the dirt of the desert at some undetermined point.

...

On Sunday I decided not to call a car, but got up in the morning and caught a public bus over the hills to LA.  As it rolled into familiar streets I felt a relief I hadn’t expected.

I walked up Elysian Park Hill and felt another small weight lifted from me when I saw Bardock already there, waiting for me.  He wore scruffy shorts to the knee, and some very beaten looking army boots, but his shirt was hanging behind him, tucked into the waistband of his shorts.  He had his back turned as I arrived, and I hesitated on the edge of the clearing, caught in involuntary admiration of his form. Is this what Goku would look like in a handful of years? I wondered.  A Vancouver film star couldn’t be better sculpted. Then I pushed on, putting the thought aside.

“Bardock!”

He turned and crossed the clearing so that we met in the middle.

“So, did you discover anything?” he asked, even more eager than I was to see him.  I stopped short. Bardock was not one to bother with pleasantries.

“Not about Goku, no.  I’ve been given access to about the last ten years of Saiyan children’s psychological records, but he’s not amongst them.  I’ve inspected all the habitats in the building, and unless there are hidden rooms, I didn’t see him.”

“Did you check the holding pens out back?”

“The  _ what? _ ”

“Not in the main building.  There are smaller buildings at the back of the compound.  That’s where they took me before sending me to the WRU. They didn’t tell you about those, did they?”

“No.”

“Well, I doubt they’d tell you everything at once, and they’ll probably never tell you some things.  You’re going to have to look, and push, and sneak to find out more than they think you need to.”

I looked at the ground, feeling like he was telling me off somehow.  “I know. I’ve only been there a week. That’s barely enough time to be able find my way around, so of course I haven’t commenced my  _ espionage  _ program.”  I said it a little sarcastically, though this was the reality of what I was doing, and I felt even more out of my depth for putting it in words.

“I know.  It could take a long time.  It could take years. It took Gine and me years…I just hope it doesn’t this time.”

We sat facing the ruins again.  I got out the granola bars and fruit I had brought to share, and Bardock took what I gave him without question.  He was two mouthfuls into the bar before he said, “Thank you, Bulma.”

“I figured you’d be hungry.”

“Not just for that.  For all of this. It’s hard for me to sit by and be useless when it’s my son and...Gine that are missing.”

“Yeah.”

We sat in silence for a while.  This was my third meeting with Bardock on the hill.  Last time we had been jubilant about me getting the job.  But now that I had it, there was no milestone to make. Just an intimidating, amorphous task ahead with no guaranteed path to success.

“What’s the old place look like to you?” he asked.

I told him about how nice everything was, the nurses and the generator habitat.  He smiled as I spoke, a twisted thing. At last he laughed and hung his head.

“You know, it’s kind of ironic, but I have a lot of good memories of that place.  There were good carers and bad ones, but I loved my brothers and sisters. We were never alone.  We were too ignorant to know we were missing out on anything.”

“All the nice stuff at Illuminary Inc headquarters... I feel like it’s to make the adults feel better, not the kids.”

His shoulders heaved in a short chuckle.  “I’d guess you’re right. Nice things, nice surroundings to make them feel less guilty.”

“Less like a prison.”

“Exactly.  So, what have you found out in your first week?”

“I heard Radishya and Michael’s story.”

“You mean the official Illuminary Inc version?”

“Yes.  I guessed it was.  Do you know what really happened - how the Saiyan children ended up in Double I’s hands?”

“Oh, listen to you!” he exclaimed.  “Using the local lingo already. You sound like one of  _ them _ .”

“Sorry.  Should I not?”

He shook his head.  “I’m joking. It’s probably a good thing if you fit in with them.  And no, I don’t know how the Saiyan kids ended up in Illuminary Inc’s hands.  I guess I will find out when I finally meet Radishya and her family. Given that they’re hiding out from the government, I’m guessing there’s more to the story than the fable they preach at the company.”

“I was also told my task,” I said.  Bardock turned to me, giving me his full attention.  The gouge I had given him was still a pink scar down the side of his face.  I hoped it would fade eventually. I regretted marring such a face.

“And?” he asked.

“I am supposed to determine what, if any, environmental factors affect the onset of the fade.  What retards it, what speeds it up.”

“It’s not just puberty?  I figured that’s what it was.”

“No.  It isn’t.”  I frowned, thinking over what I’d learned from the older studies.  “They used to think it was related to puberty, but some previous researchers tried giving the kids puberty inhibiting drugs, and they still went through the fade.”

Bardock’s look of disgust mirrored my own feelings.

“So the current thinking is that it’s tied to emotional development.  Which can also be manipulated.”

“Hmm.  Then that’s what they want.  To manipulate the onset of the fade.  To extend viability.”

I didn’t argue with him.  At no point had Dr Wright stated that aim, but it was too obvious not to see.

“So, that’s my job.  Disrupt the emotional development of already disrupted children.  I hope I find Goku and Gine soon, because I don’t want to be contributing to the misery.”

“Maybe you don’t have to,” he said.  “Maybe you hang on to that job as long as possible, achieving absolutely nothing.  Yeah? If you’re there being paid to do bogus research, no one else is there doing real research.”

My heart and, to be honest, ego, shirked away from that.  I did not want to be at Illuminary Inc any longer than absolutely necessary, and certainly not dragging my newly hatched professional reputation in the dirt.  Not to mention how lonely it was for me at the company, and in Victorville.

Of course,” he said.  “If you do that, you will never impress them enough to get a position at the WRU.”

I hadn’t even thought that far down the path, and thinking about it now - faking years of a career, and actually delivering results on my research - horrified me even more.  Hopefully it never came to that.

“Hey,” I said, surfacing from thought.  “You know I have two bedrooms in my new house.  You don’t have to live in the South East Wilderness.  You could move in with me.”

Bardock baulked.  “To Victorville? No way!”

“I know it’s bad, but surely it’s not worse than the South East Wilderness?”

“Maybe - I don’t know.  But I can’t go to Victorville.  There are too many Illuminary Inc staff there, or travelling through, even WRU people going through to Barstow.  I’d be recognized.”

“You could stay inside…”  I read the displeasure in his face at that idea.  Confined in a small space - just what he didn’t ever want again.  “Sorry. Dumb idea. But we should have another way of communicating.  What if something comes up and it’s six days until our next meeting? Or one of us gets sick, or has to run?”

“I guess another method would be good.”

“I set up an anonymous email for you on the darkweb.  It’s absolutely untraceable.”

Bardock snickered.  “Nice try, but there’s no access to the super web of any kind within an hour’s walk of the Wilderness.”

“What?  Then how did they get hold of Radishya for you?”

“Long wave radio.”

I stared at him.  Technology from the beginning of time!

“Why that?”

“Because the traffic can’t be blocked, and doesn’t require cables or satellites to transmit.  They encrypt it of course, because anyone can listen in to the conversation if they find the right frequency, but that’s how the Wilderness areas and other small groups keep in contact.”

“Can I have one?”

He shrugged.  “I’ll ask, but I think they are in pretty short supply.  They may question the urgency.”

I decided that I was going to buy a long wave radio as soon as I could.

We stayed and talked until the sun set, and then we walked down the hill together.  As dusk came on, the gloom made the footing harder.

“Are you going to be all right getting home?” he asked.

“Me?” I said, laughing and pointed at my wristband.  “I already ordered a car. I can give you a lift closer to the wilderness if you like.”

He paused, considering.  “Is there anything out that way that you could legitimately be visiting at this time of night?”

“I don’t think I’m being monitored.  I don’t  _ think _ .”  The idea chilled me.  “There’s a vineyard restaurant out there that I’ve heard was good.  I could go there for dinner.  _ We  _ could go there for dinner together.”

Suddenly my face was turning red, but luckily the light was too poor to notice.  It had sounded like I had proposed a date, which wasn’t how I’d meant it, but damn it if my brain hadn’t gone right there.

“I’m not exactly an expert in these things, but I don’t think I’m dressed for a fancy restaurant, do you?” he asked.

“No,” I admitted.  At least he had his shirt back on now.  “Sorry. Wear a tuxedo next time, okay?”

He laughed, a sound that made my heart leap and tear itself to bits at the same time, and I wasn’t sure if it was because his laugh was so rare, or because it sounded just like Goku’s.

“Sure thing, kid.”

In the car, on the way out to the vineyard, I finally dared voice the thing that had been pressing on me the most.

“I don’t like it in Victorville.  Or Illuminary Inc. There’s no one I can talk to.”

My chin wobbled, unseen in the dark.  Until the last couple of weeks I would have called myself well-used to being a loner, but this was next level.  This was out there in a hostile adult world, alone.

“I’m sorry,” Bardock said, softly.  “Is there no one you can make friends with?”

“Not really.  The people at Illuminary Inc are all complicit in the enslavement of Saiyan children.  How can I make friends with people like that?”

“I don’t know.  I think Gine had similar problems at Barstow.  They all liked her, but she couldn’t let them get too close.”

I remembered Gine’s distant sadness.

“What about the other townsfolk?  Your neighbors?”

I snorted at the idea.  “I don’t think there is anyone around my age in the neighborhood that isn’t still going to high school!  And Victorville is a little bit...crimey. Plus there’s this cold bitch persona I have to keep up.”

When the car stopped outside the vineyard a quarter of an hour later, we both got out.

“You’re okay, though, right?” he asked.

“I’m okay.”

“Good.”  He reached out to pat me awkwardly on the shoulder, and then gathered me in for a hug.  “I’m sorry, Bulma. I’m sorry you’ve been dragged into this shit, too, but I’m so thankful you’re here helping me.”

“That’s okay.”

With a final squeeze, he stepped away and began jogging off into the night, jumping a fence and running between rows of grapevines.

I ate a lovely meal that night, still feeling Bardock’s arms around me in my memory, but the momentary comfort of it faded into melancholy.

...

_ “Oh, my word, Miss Briefs, you do have a thing for the Saiyan males, don’t you?  Goku, Vegeta,  _ and  _ Bardock!” _

_ “Was just a silly crush, embarrassing to remember.  I knew it wasn’t going anywhere. He was Goku’s dad, Gine’s lover.  I knew he wasn’t for me. I was just lonely.” _

_ “Not like your abiding thing for Vegeta, then?”   _

_ The words smashed through one time straight into another - another time I had tried to deny and hold back my feelings, and if only I had succeeded!  It hurt, like an aching cavity in my chest, but with the drug in my system, I felt myself laughing.  _

_ “No, more like that than you’d think!” _


	8. Illuminary Inc and the Pacific - 2133

**CHAPTER EIGHT:  ILLUMINARY INC AND THE PACIFIC 2133**

On Monday morning I requested a slightly earlier pick up.

When the car rolled to a stop outside the main entrance to the Illuminary Inc admin block, instead of heading through the doors I took a stroll down the side of the building.  There was a strip of groomed garden seperating a path from the lot of company cars and nothing remarkable until I rounded the outer corner of the first wing. The garden expanded...and in it was a collection of single story buildings.  They had no windows beside high strips close to the roof.

Full of misgiving and nervousness, I set off through the garden to approach them, only to find a fence made of thick wire palings.  It was neck height on me, and the wires were cut to a point, not bent over, in a very definite signal to keep out.

I followed the fence around until it came to the largest of the buildings.  The fence joined the building at either side of its front face, and a rolling garage door was painted with the words “Loading Zone.  Authorized Personnel Only.”

I lingered outside as long as I could, but I could hear nothing.  When I saw a security guard wandering across the paths of the inner garden I moved on.

...

In my first week I had been trained in the use of the insulating suit and toured the various habitats.  In my second week I did a deeper study of the habitats.

I noted that there weren’t enough nurses in the youngest nurseries for the amount of children, and that babies sometimes cried for a long time before their needs were seen to, and I knew that this would result in withdrawn, anxious children and adults that could be needy and demanding.  I wondered if this was just bad caregiving or intentional. It was something to follow up in my research, anyway.

The children in the nurseries seemed much like any other children of their ages, though.  They played and sometimes fought, sat for lessons, competed for the attention of teachers and caregivers, loved clambering on their climbing frames in the yard, competitions, picking on each other, and other occasional anti-social behaviours.  Their dormitories were cute, and they had no shortage of toys. In my second week I was invited to a “Birthday” celebration for a little girl. She was excited to be the center of attention, and there was cake and presents, almost the same as any other children’s birthday party.

I also sat in lessons, listening to the math and language studies and hearing the almost endless reassurance that they would need these skills once they were grown and out and about in the wide world, becoming whatever they wanted to be.  Multiple times a day I would hear a teacher or carer talk about what a wonderful thing it was that they would soon be off helping all the people of the Super States of America live their lives and keep the country safe.

“You are so lucky,” said one.  “I wish I had been able to be half as special and useful as you will be when you join a generator next year.”

The caregivers and teachers genuinely seemed to believe this.  For my part, it was an effort to hold my tongue.

The handful of children who lived in the generator - their steady flows powering all of Southern California that wind and solar didn’t cover - were not much different to the nursery inmates, except that their dramas were much more adolescent and angsty in nature.

At the end of the second week I was introduced to the inmates of the research habitat.  They were returnees - kids whose power outputs had become unstable or unmanageable. They were all between the ages of twelve and fifteen, and greeted me with curiosity when I was introduced, robed and hooded in my heavy insulated suit.  I had been told that they were mine to study and experiment with.

“Fade is a gradual process,” Dr Wright had explained to me.  “Its onset is a little unpredictable, occurring anywhere from eleven years to fourteen years in the girls and twelve to fifteen in the boys, but once it shows, its progress is pretty uniform.  First the fluctuations in power output become greater and less tethered to the circadian rhythm. The fluctuation increases to the point that the child itself can detect it, and from there, they begin to learn to manipulate it, and the lows and spikes start to become extreme.  Eventually, an even flow is almost impossible for them without active concentration, and that is the end of their careers as generators. In all, it takes around six months, and by the end of it the kids are somewhat neurotic, which is why we believe there is a link between psychology and fade.”

“How do the adults fare, after they leave Illuminary Inc?” I asked her.

She shrugged.  “Well enough.”

“I think it would help to interview some of them, to see where they are at now.  It might shed light on the transitions of the fade. I’m wondering if it’s typical adolescent growth or something particular to Saiyans.”

“I’m not sure you’d learn much by that,” Dr Wright told me.  “It’s really quite a chore to get Saiyans in once they’ve left Illuminary Inc’s hands.  I think you’ll get a lot more from the subjects we have in right now.” She was so earnest sounding that I wondered if she truly believed what she was saying.  “The ones we have in right now have been taken out of service at the start of their fade for the purposes of study. Normally we’d keep them in service until they actually began to fail, unless the nature of their installation makes that unfeasible for whatever reason.  The geneticists are studying this from the other angle - trying to link the age of fade onset to genetic coding, but so far they’ve had no luck.”

“Hang on, wouldn’t all the clones have the same genetic makeup?  I thought that Saiyans only came in five, um, flavors, I guess.”

The doctor gave me a strange look.  “No, there are the five original base strains, but there are major product lines developed from each, and within those there’s barely two Saiyans that are turned out exactly alike.  It’s an ongoing experiment, tweaking this or that to increase power output, or promote docility, or whatever is determined is needed. At the very least, the coding for their eye flecks is individual for each.”

“What are the eye flecks?”

“Physical markers - gold flecks in their eyes.  They’re placed very specifically to indicate their strain and serial number.  Sometimes you can tell two Nappas or two Kales apart, but not always, and sometimes those kids like to play pranks.  The eye flecks don’t lie though.”

“Oh.”  Serial numbered kids.  Delightful.

“That’s why I told you that the individual files are very important - not just for the different experiences and environments each child had, but for their individual genetic makeup.  There should be notes. If you need a hand interpreting the genetic notes, let me know and I can arrange someone in genetics to assist you.”

I learned that the original lines were Kakarott, Nappa, Fasha, Caulifla, and Vegeta.  Each of these lines had a number of sublines. Turles and Bardock from Kakarott, Tora and Shugesh from Nappa, Toma and Musha from Fasha, Kale and Brocca from Caulifla, and Tarble and Cabba from Vegeta.  After that there were hybrid lines - Saiyans crossed with each other, and also the introduction of a greater proportion of non-Saiyan DNA. They were all supposed to wear identifier tags at Illuminary Inc HQ, but the flecks of gold in their irises were a good and foolproof way of establishing identity.  The position of the flecks in their left iris indicated the major and minor lines by their positions, and the flecks in their right eyes was their serial number in that line.

Interestingly, Illuminary Inc didn’t beat around the bush when they handed over individual histories.  The six year olds sent to solitary confinement in various far flung generators were all there, and the bare bones of their psychological reports.  Loneliness, anxiety, and depression were common ailments. The kids in the communal generators seemed to fare far better from a psychological standpoint, and mostly held off fade a little longer.  

My third week I spent mostly getting to know my crew.

There was Fasha Toma 57, who did her time in a communal generator before returning here just as she turned fifteen.  She was a generally a good natured girl who looked forward to her release, but was scared of it at the same time. Another Fasha Toma 123, who was only twelve, used to be the sole generator for a small town in Alaska, and was given to long periods of deep thought.  Nappa Tora 71, who was from another group generator and was nearly fifteen. Caulifla Kale 32 and Caulifla Brocca 11, both thirteen, one from the generator here and one from a generator of just two children in Port o Prince. Last was Kakarott Turles 44, who was fourteen and an unbelievable little shit.  The first time I saw him I flinched, thinking it was actually Goku for a second, though his skin was a darker coffee color. But I hadn’t known him five minutes before his abrasive, trouble making personality destroyed practically any resemblance in my eyes. He had done his time powering a military base on the East coast.

I visited the kids daily in my insulated suit.  Toma 57 and Turles both claimed to be able to stop their outputs now, but I had been warned that accidents can and did happen with these unstable teens, and there was no way I was taking my suit off just because they said they were safe.

At first the task of puzzling this all out seemed near impossible, and I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn’t really here to solve Illuminary Inc’s problems, but to find Goku.  I spent every lunchtime and a lot of the rest of the time as well scouring every corner of the company’s intranet and servers for signs of him, but he was either not in the system, or any record of him was too far out of my reach to find it.  I realized that I might need help to find things that I shouldn’t be looking for, but my ice queen act had warded everyone off. I needed to adjust my assumed persona. Instead of dismissive and stand-offish, I needed to be a charming, chatty psychopath.  With what I was worried was obviously faked warmth, I began to reach out to my co workers, engaging them in conversations about the weather, Victorville, and the company. It was a bit of an uphill battle, and I guess my youth wasn’t helping. It had always hindered being seen as a peer at university, and it seemed no different here where the nearest co-workers in age to me were in their mid twenties and worked in the cafeteria.  Finally, after weeks of courting the nurses, carers, and other researchers, I knew I was beginning to make headway when I entered the ready room to don my suit and encountered one of the youngest carers at Illuminary Inc taking hers off after leaving the habitat.

“Man,  that Turles is too much,” she said.

“Huh?  Was he behaving badly?”

“Not today.  He was being - ahem - _charming_.”

Oh?”

“Have any of those boys hit on you yet?  Especially those Turles boys, man, their self esteem is built of stainless steel.”

“No!” I exclaimed.  “He’s mostly just been a pain in the ass with me.”

“Oh, pain in the ass is right!  But be glad you don’t have any Vegetas in the study group.  They are to most difficult by far. Which is my guess why they don’t make many of them.”

“Do you have any other tips about the Saiyans?”

She shrugged.  “The original line Fashas can be little bitches, to be honest.  Not that we get many of those these days. You have to watch the Kales, because though they are quiet and take a lot of abuse, when they snap, they _snap_ , if you know what I mean.  So, it’s best not to let them get picked on too much.  The Cauliflas tend to be the police of any group, always on the look-out for unfairness or bad behaviour.  If you want to make your job easier, get a Caulifla on your side and she’ll do half the work for you!”

“Oh, good tip.  How long have you been looking after Saiyan kids?”

“A couple of years,” she said.

“Have you ever seen hybrid kids come through here?”

“Oh, yes!  Not many lately, but a while ago.”

“Are they much different?”

“A little.  But they’re still Saiyans, that’s for sure.”

“Are they all planned hybrids, or do they sometimes get…?”

“Unplanned hybrids?” she said, her face transforming with the delightful suggestion of scandal.  “Not that _I’ve_ seen, but I heard that they used to get the odd pregnancy back when the generators were co-ed.  It’s all a bit ick, because technically they’re all brother and sisters, but...I guess teenagers have hormones, and these kids are shut-ins!”

“What about hybrids between Saiyans and non-Saiyans?”

“Not that I’ve heard.”  She frowned. “Someone would have to be doing something very wrong for that to happen.”

I considered my next question carefully.  “But what about the children of the Saiyans that are reintegrated?  Unless they’re breeding with other Saiyans, their kids would be human-Saiyan hybrids, too, right?  Or do they not have the same powers as full Saiyans?”

She paused as she pulled her suit from one leg.  “I wouldn’t think so, or we’d have half-Saiyan kids coming through here all the time.  You know what - they probably can’t breed. Maybe they get sterilized or something before they leave - I mean, can you imagine?  Electric babies born in the wild? Either that or the trait doesn’t get passed on.”

“Mmm.  So every kid that comes through here was born here?”

“That I know of.  And the returnees, of course, though most of the time they don’t come into the main facility.”

“Where are they housed then?”

“The quarantine and rehab habitats out the back.  Just short term before they’re…” She waved her hands in a vague outwards gesture.

“Oh.  Maybe I should go visit the kids in quarantine, too?  I feel like I need a wider study group.”

Her face showed that maybe one of us had said something wrong.  “Oh, I don’t know if they’ll allow that. I mean, it is _quarantine_.”

“Quarantine for what?”

“I guess things that they may have picked up?”  I could tell by looking at her face that that didn’t even make sense to her.

“I guess.”

I did request access to the quarantine and rehab habitats and was granted a tour of an empty habitat.  I was told there was no one currently in quarantine. I also asked for access to the records for children who had been held in quarantine.

“I’m not sure why you would need it,” said Dr Wright, when I asked.  “It’s kind of outside the scope of your research.”

“Just following trends,” I lied off the top of my head.  “It could be that there’s still valuable data in the last stages of the fade.  If I could cross check that against the conditions that a child of interest experienced, it might give us some leads to test.”

So I was granted access to a list of thousands of serial numbered kids.  There was a lot of raw data about the power fluctuations on each of them, summarized in graphs, holding times, but that was it.  It would have been a lot to go on if I was truly using it, but in reality I only read through the last year’s worth of entries. There were no Gokus or any Saiyan child of unusual name in there.  It was very disheartening.

I found myself playing three roles - confidant and friend to the kids, trusted gossipmonger amongst the carers and other staff, and company-loyal ice queen to my superiors.

I had an office in the research habitat where I could talk to each child separately.  At first, when I began questioning them, I got very dry answers to my questions. Some of them treated my interviews as quizzes with right and wrong answers.  Turles treated them as a waste of his time. Toma 123 was the most forthcoming. She was shy, but seemed to latch onto me quite quickly. I noticed that she always watched the others closely, too, as if wanting to jump into every conversation and interaction, but not quite knowing how.  She obviously craved company, and would entertain my questions for hours.

“What do you dream about the most?” I asked her in one interview.

“You mean in my sleep, or day dream?”

“Tell me both.”

“I dream about flying,” she said.  “I dream that I fly to the roof of the cage, and the bars lift up, and I fly all the way to the city.  Sometimes it gets scary, because I get lost and I can’t find my way back. Or sometimes I fly into a wolf den, but then it’s not scary, because I turn into a baby wolf, and the mother wolf takes care of me.”  She grinned. “I don’t know. I dream lots of silly things.”

I already hated the bars on the outside play area, and I was only in the habitat for a few hours each day.  I wasn’t surprised that she would dream of escaping them. When I’d asked why there were bars instead of glass, I had been told that if it were glass, the Saiyan children would never feel fresh air on their faces, an even more depressing thought.

“And what do you daydream about?” I asked her.

Her grin grew wider and she blushed.  “Having a boyfriend and getting married and stuff.”

I smiled at her sweetness and had to swiftly suppress the question of whether that would ever be allowed to happen for her.

“But when I was still in Alaska I used to daydream about escaping all the time, too.”

I swallowed.  “You don’t dream about escaping anymore?”

She shook her head.  “I don’t need to - I’m nearly free now!”

When I eventually got through to the rest, they all admitted to thoughts about escaping - For Toma 57 and Tora 71 it was more of an idle fantasy, but for Toma 123 and Turles 44 it had been a fervent wish, and the others were somewhere in between.  Tora’s rather poignant and desperate wish was to play baseball, because he thought he might rather like it. Another common theme was that despite their excitement they all felt nervous about the upcoming transition. They had been given no idea about what to expect, and had filled up the vacuum with their own speculations.  The very lack of preparation for their reintegration was telling in itself, and I felt more than nervous on their behalf. Still, it gave me an idea.

“I think that the unknown nature of the transition might be causing stress that speeds up the fade - or it could be a contributing factor, at least.” I told Kelly Wright next time I met with her.  “I want to be able to examine the reintegration program and see if giving them education on what to expect helps in anyway.”

She didn’t react as I asked this, but when I was done she looked away from me at some unseen distance for a second before looking back at me.

“Sure.  I will ask the rehab team to give you material you can work with.  I take it you want to experiment on a group of active Saiyans?”

“Yes, but…  Can I see the process?”

She waved her hand in a shooing motion.  “It mostly happens off-site. The literature should be enough.”

When the material turned up it came in the form of fairly comprehensive case studies of one Nappa Sugesh 143 and one Caulifla Brocca 3.  Sugesh had spent a month in quarantine with daily educational lessons, and chosen a new name for his new life. Then he had been transferred to a foster family in Indiana.  From there he had had several weeks to acclimate to the family, with daily remote counselling sessions with double I psychologists, before beginning school at the local high school and switching to weekly counselling for six months until he had dropped back to counselling on a needs basis.  He had continued to receive birthday presents from Illuminary Inc until age nineteen, when he had been given a small trust fund to make his way in the world. His fostering was handled by the Indianapolis Child Services office and he had attended Greenwood High School, graduating with a low B average before entering community college to study animal husbandry.  His new name - Antony Madden - was listed with his foster parents’, child services contacts, and school reports. It was so detailed it was hard not to believe it was true. Brocca’s story was similar, but fostered in Louisiana and moved to two more foster homes before graduating high school with a B+. If it was all lies, would they not have given both youngsters great educational and fostering outcomes?

“How do we know that they’re not reintegrating some Saiyans?” I asked Bardock the next time we met.  “Maybe it’s only a few that they keep for the military. Maybe they thought you in particular would make a good soldier?”

“They wouldn’t let Saiyans loose like that,” he replied.  “Think about it! We constantly walk around with a deadly weapon built into us, and our genetic material could be precious to any number of industries, or worse, to foreign agents.  They would not risk free Saiyans! They hunt Radishya and the others for that very reason!”

That cured my doubts for a while, but still, they surfaced now and then in the calm, pleasant surroundings of Illuminary Inc HQ.   _What made more sense?_ my lulled mind asked.   _That Illuminary Inc rehabilitate kids, or that a vast conspiracy surrounds the fate of these children?_

There was one measure that I identified that I thought really might slow the fade, and I was happy to suggest it, because I thought it would benefit all the children.

“They are too isolated.  Even the ones in communal generators miss the brothers and sisters they were brought up with.  You already have tele-conferencing in place for the lessons they get, so using that to allow the kids to talk to each other I think would go a long way to easing their anxieties.”

It was conceded that this might be the case, and within the week a test group had a regular class conference and were given numbers to call one another at other times.  Even my study group got the chance to talk to nursery mates that they hadn’t seen for years, or friends from generators they had recently left. Their delight at a simple thing that the adults around them took for granted was bittersweet for me.  And seeing the faces of the kids on the other end of the line made me think of something else.

“I think I might need to see some of these remote habitats in action,” I told Dr Wright one afternoon.  “To know where they’re coming from, and what the environments they’re in are really like. A complete range would be good.”

She nodded.  “I guess that is only common sense.  We send psychologists out to remote generators all the time, so it’s no bother to send you on some field trips.”

My first trip was to an unremarkable group generator in Merida that powered the whole of the Yucatan province.  The standard of habitat was almost as high as Illuminary Inc HQ, but the kids very noticeably less satisfied with their lives than my study group.

When I returned to HQ I discovered that my study group had missed me.  I was trying my hardest not to get attached to them, but I was failing.

“You’re my favorite of all the grown ups I’ve known,” Toma 123 told me.

They were so heartbreakingly innocent of the way the world worked.  Granted, even I, with all my education had managed to remain somewhat ignorant of the way the world worked until recently, but the kids had trouble with such concepts as money and private ownership.  Most of what they knew came from books and media specially selected by and, in some cases, created by Illuminary Inc. Their imaginings about the future were naive. Only Turles seemed to be skeptical about the things he’d been told, and that appeared to have come from the teasing of his minders on the military base, who couldn’t resist ripping the wool from his eyes on certain subjects.  But even he uttered such saddeningly naive things like, “I’m going to live in a mansion when I get out of here, and have servants bring me everything.”.

After I had been at the company three months, there was a development that had the study group excited and me full of dread.  Toma 123’s power output dropped to zero and stayed there for several days. The older kids were jealous that she was going to finish her fade first, seeing it as a point of failure to not transition earlier.  Toma 123 herself was upset.

“I don’t want to go yet,” she told me when we were in the office alone.

“Why not, Toma?”

“Because...because Turles isn’t ready.  And I want to be reintegrated with him. Can you ask them to let me stay here until he finishes his fade?”

I hadn’t realized she felt that way about Turles, but it was easy to miss a lot about Toma 123, the way she hung back from everything.  I did ask for her, though. I didn’t want her moved from my sight when I didn’t know where she would end up. The request was declined.

“We have to move her out of there tomorrow,” was Nick Flitch’s response.  “It’s safer for everyone that way. They won’t be placed together, no matter when Turles finishes his fade, so there’s no point in dragging this out.  The sooner the better.”

I came to work early the next day and spent the whole morning in the habitat living room with the kids.

“You’re so lucky,” Toma 57 insisted.  “If it was me, I wouldn’t be upset.”

“It’s going to be awesome,” said Brocca.  “Whatever it is.”

I hadn’t told them about the probably-fictitious reintegration program.  I didn’t want to be remembered as someone else who lied to them if it turned out not to be true.  Hoping the hood of my insulation suit hid them, tears slid silently down my cheeks.

Toma 123 tried to smile.  “I know. I’m being silly.  I’m just going to miss you all so much.”  Her eyes lingered on Turles. Inspired, he crossed the room and took her hand.  She lit up, lightning arcing to the ceiling, making the other kids roar with laughter.  

“We can all find each other afterwards,” he said, showing a lot more tenderness than I had seen from him before.  I wondered suddenly if Toma’s interest was not as one-sided as I had thought. “Yeah?”

Toma 123 nodded, and the others agreed, too.  And that was the moment that Beryl, one of the senior carers, entered through the ready room.  I looked to the window out into the corridor and saw another carer with the mesh transfer cage parked outside.  When he had it in position, the glass door popped open, awaiting the cargo.

“Hello, Toma 123,” she said.  “Are you ready for your trip across the yard?”

Toma shot ot her feet and looked about her little circle of friends.  “I thought I had until the end of the day!”

“No, it’s now.  Say goodbye.”

Toma went around, hugging us all in turn, and Turles last.

“People are waiting,” Beryl said amidst this tender moment.  As Toma and Turles parted Beryl took hold of Toma’s wrist to hurry her along, but Turles spoke.

“Toma.”  

Instantly she was rooted to the spot.  “What is it?”

Beryl tugged impatiently on her wrist.  I thought about saying something, but I wasn’t sure if telling a carer off for insensitivity would mark me as getting too sympathetic towards the Saiyans.

“I-”

“Toma!” huffed Beryl, “You’ve known for two days that you were leaving!”

Toma’s head snapped around to look at Beryl in anger, but that wasn’t the only thing that snapped.  The arc of electricity that came off her was thick, blinding and audible, and struck Beryl square in the chest.  Despite the suit she was knocked off her feet with a cry and went to the ground, hugging her arms to her chest. I cried out too, just as clueless about what to do as the kids, who stared in shock.  Toma herself looked horrified and backed up, but arcs were still coming off her, scaling the mesh on the walls, the floor, crawling across Turles and making him yelp and scramble away. She looked at me, but all I could do was back up the wall and feel for the door to the office.  Out in the corridor the other carer was shouting something into his wristband. Beryl rolled to her hands and knees and started to crawl away.

“I’m sorry!” Toma said, looking helplessly at the stream of power coming from the end of her fingers.  “I didn’t mean to!”

Beryl looked back at her.  “Keep away from me!” she cried and made a dash for the ready room door.  As she made it through, another carer stepped in. Or maybe it wasn’t a carer.  It appeared to be a man, dressed in a totally anonymous insulation suit. He raised a gun.

“No!” I screamed as he pulled the trigger.  Toma tried to run, but fell to the ground, a dart in her shoulder, and the other kids scattered, screaming.

“Bulma!” she said, but then her lids drifted closed.

I looked up at this stranger.  “What did you just do?” I roared.

“I sedated her,” was the reply.  “Calm yourself, woman. We don’t want to have to deal with a histrionic therapist as well.”

He bent and easily lifted the girl into his arms, carrying her to the waiting transfer cage.

After he was gone I had only a minute to see if the others were okay before Nick Flitch was coming in through the ready room.

“Bulma, I hear you had a bit of drama here, just now?”

“You could say that.”  I was still shaking.

“You kids all right?” he asked them.  They nodded, too freaked out to respond in anything but the most automatic way.  They were not all right. Two more carers were coming into the room behind him. “Come on, Bulma, let’s go back to my office to talk about it.  Their regular carers can look after them for now.”

Twenty minutes later I was being served tea in the Head of Care’s office, describing the scene as it had played out.

“We must have left Toma’s transfer a little too late,” he said.  “That’s what the quarantine is for, really. It gives them a chance to learn to properly control their power, despite whatever provocation they recieve.  Then he shook his head. “That was clumsy of Beryl.”

“Toma wouldn’t have been provoked if she’d had an ounce more patience,” I said.

“Agreed.  She’s very experienced, but I think a little complacency must have snuck in.  She’s shaken and sore, but okay.”

I didn’t care how Beryl was at that moment.  “Can I see Toma? She must be scared.”

“I’m afraid not,” said Nick with a grimace.  “ _Quarantine_.”

“It’s not true quarantine.  It’s not like I will get sick from seeing her.”

“But you could get hurt.  And it’s the procedure. She’s probably out cold still.  Don’t worry about Toma. There are others to take care of her.  How about yourself? Feeling okay?”

I wasn’t.  “I’m fine.”

“Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?  I’ll let Kelly know.”

“That’s unnecessary.”

“If you say so.  But I think you should.”

As I left his office and made my way to my own, still in my insulation suit I was almost overcome by the need to cry.  Suddenly desperate, I closed my office door, tore off the suit and then hurried as fast as I could out without actually running, down the corridors for the front entrance, ignoring all in my path, and out into the car park.  I got inside the nearest vehicle and broke down.

“Please state your destination.”

It took me three attempts between sobs before the automatic chauffeur understood me.

...

I couldn’t stop the thoughts.  Was Toma going to be given the choice to serve or die?  Would she even be given the choice? The thought made me sick to my stomach, and not only did I take the rest of the day off, but the next one, too.  When I contemplated going to work in the morning my legs felt like jelly. I was supposed to be the ice queen, and right now I was a snivelling princess.  If I looked weak for not showing up, I would look weaker for showing up with puffy, red eyes. At least it was Friday. I pulled it together long enough to call Dr Wright and apologize for an upset stomach.

“I really wanted to see the effect the event had on the rest of the children in the study group,” I said, feeling guilty about that, too.  “I guess it will have to wait until next week.”

“Don’t beat yourself up about it, Bulma.  And stay away from that Indian takeout! No wonder you got sick, that place is terrible.”

That Sunday I regurgitated the tale to Bardock, feeling a little calmer about it.

“I think her tale is not unusual,” he said.

“Did you know any Tomas in the army?”

“I knew a few.  I had one on my squad.”

“So they make Tomas into soldiers, too?”

He smiled.  “Yeah. They make decent soldiers.”

I sighed.  At least I could hope she was alive.

...

When I got in on Monday morning I felt ready to assume my various personas again, at least I did until I reached the study habitat.  It was empty. I called Nick from the handset in the habitat office.

“Hey, where are the kids?” I demanded.

“The research group?  We made the decision on Friday to transition them all early.  It was getting a little messy, and really, quarantine is the best place for them right now.”

I barely resisted the urge to smash the handset into the cradle.

“And what am I supposed to study now?”

“There’ll be a new group soon enough.  And I saw Kelly earlier. I think she’s already got something for you to do in the meantime.”

…

“We’re sending you...mmm, about four thousand miles out into the Pacific Ocean.”

“WHAT?”

Dr Wright chuckled at my outburst.  “Well, it will likely acquaint you with the first member of your new research group, as well as his habitat for the last eight years.  He’s a Vegeta strain…” She looked down at her workstation display. “Vegeta Tarble Two. Very rare, and one of the first of his kind, as you can tell by the name.  Immense output for a single Saiyan, and the military prefer single unit generators for whatever reason - probably space. He’s serving on an aircraft carrier.”

My initial outrage was turning into realization.  This was what it was going to be like - kid after kid sent to me to be studied before they were served the lie of a lifetime.

“Bulma, are you alright?”

“Yes.  I am.”

“Do you get sea sick?  I’m told the ships are so huge you can’t even feel the motion of the sea unless it’s a massive storm.  And don’t worry about it being a combat zone. The navy wouldn’t allow a civilian to be sent out if there was a possibility of engagement.”

“Oh.  Good.”

“So, this Tarble’s fade has begun to set in.  You’re just going to observe his habitat and routines, but if it turns out that there is something you can do to hold the fade off, the military would be most happy.  Presently there’s no replacement for him, so we’d have to send two Saiyans out there, to a habitat only set up for one.”

“Got it.”

…

The next morning I found myself picked up by a car all of my own.  I had a bag with three days worth of clothes, pants and flat shoes only, and layers.  I wasn’t told where the aircraft carrier was, only to expect any weather between tropical and freezing.

The car took me past the normal turn off for Illuminary Inc and continued North to Barstow.  I watched the car ahead, wondering if it could contain my father on his commute to WRU.

Barstow, when we reached it, looked like a smaller, slightly more together version of Victorville.  The car rolled into the town and then turned East, taking a highway before veering off towards a gated perimeter fence.  “Barstow Marines Base,” said the signage. A human guard with a rifle checked my visitor’s card while my facial biometrics were scanned.

“Step out of the vehicle, please.  Bring your luggage, too.”

I did so, quaking in my boots.  What if they had found some evidence linking me with Bardock?

The marine tapped the top of the car once I was free.  “Go home, now,” he told it. To me, he said, “Just wait here a minute.  A liaison is coming to pick you up.”

I stood in the shade of the guard’s sentry hut until another vehicle approached from the other side of the gate.  As it got closer the gate swung open. It looked like a golf cart painted the color of the desert sand. It made a sharp U-turn in front of the hut and rolled to a stop beside me.

“Howdy,” said the young man in the front seat.  He wore a smart, formal looking uniform shirt and pants and a grin that just about cut his face in half.  The sentry saluted, and the man straightened, saluted in return, and then relaxed again.

“You Bulma Briefs?” he asked, offering me his hand.

I shook it, but instead of letting go he pulled me into the cart by it.  “Oh! Yes, I am.”

“Good to meet you.  I’m Lieutenant Yamcha Bandido, the Public Affairs Officer for the SSAS Behemoth, and I’ll be your liason for the duration.”

I wasn’t sure what to make of this guy.  He seemed so cheerful, and I hadn’t even said anything yet, I felt like he must be making fun of me.  He had dark hair, short flicks of it peeking up from under his cap, brown eyes and deep creases each side of his mouth from smiling.

“I’m Bulma…”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Ha!  Of course.  Um.”

“Let’s get going then.  The jetcopter is prepped and is only waiting for the two of us.”  He looked behind us to make sure the sentry had loaded my bag and case.  “Roll on.”

The golf cart took off again, heading up the road towards the base.  I could see all sorts of buildings, and suddenly became nervous.

“Excuse me, but do you know if any of those buildings are part of the Weapons Research Unit?”

Yamcha was surprised.  “No. The Weapons Research Unit isn’t on this base.  That’s further East I believe.” He gave me a puzzled look.  “How do you know about that?”

“Someone I know works there.”

“Oh.  In that case, you might know more about it than I do.  That place is a secret in an enigma. I’ve never been out there, though I guess I’ve had no reason to.”.  Then he grinned again.

“You’re a heap younger than I was expecting.  I thought they were sending a psychologist.”

“I _am_ a psychologist.  You can call me Dr Briefs.”

He laughed.  “You can call me Lieutenant Bandido, in that case.”

“I’m kidding.  Call me Bulma.”

“Good.  Then I’m Yamcha.  How old are you? If that’s not a rude question.”

“It’s not rude until a lady is over twenty one,” I said, using one of my mother’s sayings.  “And I am not.”

“I’ve heard that one before,” said Yamcha.  “So, you are twenty one for the last...four years?”

“I’m serious - I’m twenty.”

“What!”  His face was comically surprised.  “No way! How is that possible - you’re younger than me!”

I smiled.  “I was an early achiever.”

“No kidding.  Oh, man, and I thought I’d done well by making Lieutenant by twenty four!”

...

The flight out to the aircraft carrier took some hours, but Yamcha made it fun.  He served lunch partway, with an air steward act that had me and even the pilots cracking up.  I was even offered a beer or wine, though I declined when I realized that Yamcha wouldn’t also be drinking.  

“So, what are you heading out to the SSAS Behemoth for?” he asked me after the pilots told us we were half an hour away.  “Or can you not say?”

I hadn’t been told not to say, so I did.  “I’m meeting the Saiyan child that is powering the thing and inspecting his habitat.”

“Habitat?” he repeated.

“His...cell.”

“Oh, his quarters.  Okay. Sounds interesting.  I’ve never met a Saiyan. What are they like?”

“Like ordinary kids, except that they involuntarily electrocute other people to death unless they’re wearing an insulated suit.”

“Ah.  Huh. _Ordinary_.”

...

We landed on the jetcopter pad, and immediately I felt intimidated by the size of this SSAS Behemoth.  Dozens of fighter jets lined the tarmac of a double wide runway that made up most of the deck of the ship.  The command tower did indeed tower, and in the distance I saw technicians driving small motorized buggies from A to B.  I didn’t feel like I had landed on a ship - I felt more like I’d landed on a seaside cliff girded in steel. A fighter jet was squaring up to fly, and then with an ear-splitting roar, it took off, turning so steeply into the air that I was sure the pilot, if there was one, must have suffered whiplash.

“Are those things manned?” I asked Yamcha.

“Erm, probably not right now.  They’ll just be patrolling on auto.  We haven’t had an enemy engagement in ninety days.”

“Ninety days?  I thought we hadn’t been involved in combat with the EE or the EAU for years!”

“Not major combat.  There are skirmishes all the time.”

We were greeted on the jetcopter deck by a shorter, balding man who introduced himself as Senior Chief Petty Officer Granling.

“I suppose you’ll be wanting to see the Saiyan, then?” he asked.  “Or would you like to see your berths first?”

“Berths, please,” I said, wondering if my stuffed bag of clothes and wheeled case of equipment were invisible to him.

We entered the tower and descended into a baffling maze of grey corridors.  Various colored lines and numbers were painted on the walls, presumably for orientation.

“I hope I don’t have to remember the way,” I told my escorts.

“Don’t worry about that.  Lieutenant Bandido here knows the way just fine,” said Granling.

I was shown a two-bed berth in a portal-less, featureless corridor and dumped my bag on one bed.  I looked at the other bed. “Are you staying here, too?” I asked Yamcha. He beamed, looking like he was trying not to laugh.

“No.  Next door.”

I was shown to the heads and told that for any other excursion all I needed to do was knock on the Lieutenant's door and request him to escort me wherever I needed to go.

“Right,” said Granling.  “On to the Vegeta Unit!”

We were lead down miles of more corridor, and I quickly decided that this field trip was going to be rather harder than I expected.  It was noisy on board, with all manner of clangs, thumps, and hums, and the lack of windows was unexpectedly disorientating. Within a few turns I was lost.

The door to the generator was wristband activated, but my wristband had been added to the system already.  We met the minder in an antechamber before the habitat. Petty Officer Third Class Rifleman was a bluff man, all sandy hair and skin, smiling inanely as he greeted me, “Are _you_ the shrink come to see our Vegeta?”

“I am, yes.  Doctor Bulma Briefs.”

He shook my hand overly hard.

“Nice to meet you, Bulma.  You’re awfully young for a doctor though…”  He looked to Yamcha and Chief Petty Officer Granling as if for their confirmation.

“I’m sure Illuminary Inc know what they’re doing,” said Granling.  “Doctor, Lieutenant, I must get back to my other duties, so I’ll leave you two in Petty Officer Rifleman’s capable hands.”

Rifelman raised his eyebrows at Granling’s retreating back.  “Well, then. I’ll take you through. I may as well warn you though, this Vegeta is a moody little shit, so don’t expect much life from him.”

I was immediately concerned.  “He’s listless?”

“Yeah, you could say listless, though I’d give it a different name.  That’s his problem, in a nutshell - the kid doesn’t try hard enough to have energy.  No vim, you know?”

I looked at him with some shock, not sure if he was kidding or if he literally had no clue how Saiyan power worked.

We stepped next door into the narrow observation area before the glass wall of the habitat. It was the most depressing habitat I had seen by a long way, and aptly fitted the term “cell”, even if it was larger than a prison cell.  It had an opening out to a balcony - covered with mesh and bars of course. There was also a gym area, a wall panel, a desk and chair, two wooden kid-sized chairs and matching table, toys, and evidence of all manner of hobbies, but they cluttered the place, like they had grown out of hand and been abandoned in despair.  The walls were bare metal, with a few sorry Navy recruitment posters taped to it. The most depressing thing about it was that I knew a child had been living continually in this space for eight years.

“Hey, Vegeta!” Rifleman shouted through the intercom.  “Look lively! The doctor’s here to see you!”

There was a stirring from the bed, and a kid rose from the bedsheets, pajama pants still on even though the ship time was the middle of the afternoon.  A boy with black hair and dark brown eyes looked disinterestedly at me through the glass. He was definitely in the grips of puberty, with a few stray hairs venturing out from his chin.

“So?”

That was new.  Even Turles was not that brazenly rude.

“I want to go in and meet him,” I told Rifleman.

“Is that wise?” he replied, shocking me.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Just seems risky to have contact for no reason when there’s a perfectly good intercom.”

I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that this minder was incompetent, callous and neglectful.

“No, I’m going in.”

I opened the large travel case, took out my own insulated suit and donned it, taking off my shoes and hauling the heavy folds up my body.  It was a laminate of teflon, rubber, more teflon and finally a soft cotton lining. I had done my research, and I knew how insulating these suits were, and yet seeing Beryl knocked down despite it all had shaken me.

I turned on the small ventilation and cooling unit at the back of the neck, dropped the hood down, and waded to the door.  The Saiyan inside the cage was watching me from the bed with a bored manner. I tried the door handle, but the mechanism remained locked.

“Could you put your hand on the wall, please?” I asked him.

He didn’t move.

“Hey!” yelled Rifleman, and kicked the metal of the door and causing a god-awful clang.  “Put your hand on the wall and let the lady in!”

The kid huffed a loud sigh.

“If I have to use the override, I’m going to make sure that wall panel stays off another week!”

The kid finally raised his hand and pressed it into the wall, and the handle moved under my hand.  Yamcha was frowning as I opened it.

“Are you going to be safe?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied, and then couldn’t help looking at Rifleman.

“I’m going put my suit on just in case,” he said.  “This Vegeta likes to throw tantrums now and then, and you’re pretty small.  You can’t be too careful.”

Was he actually suggesting I might be attacked by this kid?  It had never occured to me once in my time at Illuminary Inc that a Saiyan might intentionally try and harm me.

Inside I approached the bed and stood a respectful distance away.  The kid lay back down, staring at the ceiling.

“Hi, my name is Bulma.”

Silence.

“Illuminary Inc sent me, and I was hoping we could talk.”

More silence.

“I wanted to ask you about the habitat.  I’m wondering if there are any ways we could improve it.”

That finally was deemed worthy of a response.  “If they took me out of it, it would be far better.”

“I’m sure.”  I paused, unsure of how to proceed.  I could promise that he would be out of here soon, but I couldn’t bring myself to, knowing that freedom wasn’t what awaited him afterwards.  I walked towards the bed, hand outstretched. “Nice to meet you, Tarble.”

He turned his head.  “Tarble?” he said. “Who’s that?”

“You’re Tarble Two, right?” I asked, feeling alarmed.  “Vegeta Tarble Two?”

He squinted.  “Oh, yeah. That’s what I used to be called.  But here they call me Vegeta. Or Saiyan. Or The Vegeta Unit, when they think I can’t hear.”

My blood began to simmer, and I looked back out through the glass at the man squeezing his small paunch into an insulated suit..

“What name would you prefer me to call you by?” I asked the boy.

He considered.  “Vegeta, I guess.  It’s what I’m more used to.”

“Well, Vegeta, can I sit down?”

The bed was a mess and looked like the sheets should have been changed weeks ago.  There were some scorch marks here and there on the flame-retardant, mesh-inlaid sheets, an empty plate with its crumbs spilled in the folds, and a balled up sock or two.  He sat up with a look of mild shock on his face as I prepared to plant my butt on his mattress, and I got my first good look at a Vegeta-line Saiyan.

He had the same black hair as all of them, sticking almost straight up, and the same dark, almost black eyes.  He had a widow’s peak like a Nappa, but a more pointed jaw and finer features. His skin was a slightly sallow olive, and he had a few pimply pink craters on his face.

“On my bed?” he asked, incredulous.

“Is there somewhere else you’d prefer?”

He got up and crossed to the desk, taking a seat on the swivel chair there.  He wore only grey track pants with SSANavy stenciled down the side, showing off a skinny chest and shoulders that were starting to broaden.  He was caught in that awkward phase - not really a boy anymore, and definitely not yet a man.

 I looked around for somewhere for me to sit and could find only the child-sized chairs at the wildly outgrown playtable.  I turned one to face him and squatted on it with as much dignity as I could muster, and observed Vegeta’s mild enjoyment of the small humility as he sat, arms crossed and legs spread on the full-sized chair.  Interesting. Yet I scented posturing. His fingers where they gripped his arm squeezed his bicep over and over, a sign of tension of some sort.

“Why’d they send you?” he asked.

“I’m the new research psychologist at Illuminary Inc.”

“They usually send that guy… Doctor Teller.”

“He’s one of the duty therapists that go around visiting the Saiyans.  But I’m not here for the same reasons as he sees you. I’m here to see if I can adjust your habitat for the better.  Can you tell me about it?”

Vegeta was unimpressed.  “I don’t see why I should, as you only want to change it and see if you can keep me in here longer.”

“How did you… What makes you think _that?_ ”

He smirked.  “It doesn’t take a genius.  I know they don’t want to have to replace me.  It’s a big hassle. The other doctor already gave me a lecture about not getting wound up in thought, and letting things flow freely.”

So, he thought he knew why I was there.  But why did _I_ think I was there?  Did I really want to help keep him here longer?  What was worse? Here or there? Shit, I didn’t know.

“Actually, I don’t care if you stay here longer or not.  I just want to make things better for you while you are here.  Can you think of anything that would help?”

The bit of fire he’d shown for a minute died down again, and he shrugged.  “If you can’t get me out of here, what can you get me?”

I looked around the room.  His gym equipment - a treadmill, a weights machine, and a frame from which more equipment and weights could be attached all looked like it had seen heavy wear.  Even the swiss ball and the thick, knotted rope hanging from the ceiling looked dirty and worn.

“I could get you some new equipment,” I offered.  Illuminary Inc’s budget could surely cover that, and I could lie and say it would keep him level longer.

“I’d rather have more outdoor area.”

“I don’t think I can get you that.”

“I figured,” he replied sullenly.

“I’m sorry.  But maybe we can improve what you have.”  I stood up. “Can I see?”

He got up and crossed to the sliding glass door onto his balcony area.  The frame was thick, and the glass so crusted with salt I couldn’t make much out there.  When he rolled it open I was dismayed. His outdoor exercise area was a balcony smaller than the one my parents had off their bedroom, a space that could only really accommodate the two of them sipping wine and reading books.  It had a single metal chair that was corroding away in the corner and the inevitable mesh and bars. There was basically nothing to improve.

Vegeta stepped out and grasped the bars, leaning in to rest his forehead against them.  I joined him. The balcony was recessed - looking up or down or sideways I could see nothing of the rest of the ship, only the sea below and in front and to the horizon, featureless.  This was worse than Bardock had described.

“Well, this is a bit shit, isn’t it?” I said, trying to sound more upbeat than I felt.

“What’s that word?” he asked.

“Which one?”

“Shit.”

A fourteen year old boy who didn’t know the word shit.  “It means poop. But is ruder. Sorry, I shouldn’t be using words like that.”

“Don’t say sorry - it _is_ shit.  It _sucks_.”  His voice was bitter.  Even someone kept as ignorant as he was knew he was missing out.  The nursery back at Illuminary Inc was a dream in comparison. My heart filled with pity for him.  What could I do for him? What on earth could I give him that had real value?

I saw him turn his head from the side of my eye, watching me.  We were around the same height, though I doubted he was full grown.  When I turned to look at him squarely he quickly averted his eyes, and then did a double-take, looking me full in the face for the first time.  He flinched, turned away, and then, as if he didn’t know what to do with himself, started toward the open door before changing his mind and returning to the bars at the far end of the balcony.  He ventured another glance at me, a blush starting to color his cheeks. I suddenly understood what had happened. He’d gotten his first proper look at me. The visored hood and the poor lighting inside would have made it hard to see me.  I wasn’t sure if he was ruffled because he liked what he saw, or if he just never got to see many people at all.

“How often does Rifleman come inside your habitat?” I asked.

“Once a week when he’s cleaning it.  But he makes me do most of the work when he does.”

“What about when he brings your meals in?”

“He doesn’t bring them in, he just opens the door and puts them on the floor,” he explained.

My rage towards that man grew.  “That’s not protocol,” I said, almost choking on the words.

“Isn’t it?”

“What about Doctor Teller?  Does he come inside?”

“Yes.  But he doesn’t come very often.”

“Do you get any other visitors?”

He looked surprised at that.  “Urh, not that come in. Sometimes that other guy, Granling comes to talk to me, but he never comes inside.”

This boy was shockingly neglected.  I suddenly realized what I could give him, while I was here, anyway - kindness and attention.  That, and I would do my best to get Rifleman fired or demoted or whatever I could manage.

“I guess, if you don’t have anything you want for your habitat, or something I can give you, my work here is done.”

His face fell.  “You’re leaving already, then?”  That flash of dismay was then immediately buried under stoicism.  He looked out to sea. “See ya.”

“I didn’t say that.  I just mean that I’ve got a lot of time to kill now that business is out of the way, so I hope you don’t mind me hanging out in your habitat for the next couple of days.”

“What?”

“Well, during the daytime, at least.  I’ve got to look like I’m keeping busy to justify my job, you know.”

“Oh.”  I could see he was processing that, not sure what it meant.  He shivered. He was barefoot as well as shirtless. All the Saiyan habitats were kept very warm, so that the children didn’t have to wear shoes, socks, or long sleeves, as this ensured better contact with the mesh for power siphoning.  The wind was probably chilly out here, but I couldn’t feel it inside the suit.

“Why don’t we go back inside to chat?”

“Okay,” he said.  “But they can hear what you say when you’re in the room.”

“Oh, nice tip-off,” I told him with a smile.  “That would spoil the ruse a bit. Well, if we’re going to stay out here, how about a hot chocolate to keep us warm?”

“Chocolate!” he said, his face lighting up.  “They hardly ever give me chocolate! Wait, how can chocolate be hot?  I thought it melted when it got warm? Is it melted chocolate?”

My heart wept.  I had seen Saiyan kids eating chocolate at the birthday party I’d witnessed.  Unless that was an act for my benefit, Saiyan kids were not denied such things, so why was he?

“It’s a drink,” I told him.  “You’ll see. Wait here.”

I went through to the other room and marched up to the door.  Yamcha stood up, a look of concern on his face, but Granling, standing at ease in his suit, got all my attention,  I was trying not to seethe as I told him, “I need two mugs of hot chocolate, stat.”

“Hot chocolate?” he replied, eyebrows raising.

“Yes.  The best quality the cooks in this place can make.”

“The Saiyan’s dinner time is at six thirty, and he gets custard for dessert today.”

“I don’t care about that.  Just do it, please. It’s important.”

“He’s not worth that amount of fuss.”

That pushed my buttons.  “He’s powering this fu- He’s powering this ship!  I’d say that was pretty damn important, wouldn’t you?  Illuminary Inc, and the Navy, too, I assume, want all practical measures taken to try and preserve the generating capacity of this boy for as long as possible.  I think a couple of hot chocolates qualifies!”

“Yeah, all right!”

“I’m on it,” said Yamcha, completely undermining Granling.  Maybe he didn’t trust him to carry out the request as asked, either.

On my way back to Vegeta I grabbed the two kiddie sized chairs and a crumpled blanket from the floor by the bed, which I offered to Vegeta.  He was grinning.

“If I talk to Granling like that he has a fit,” he said.  “Then he takes away my wall panel access.”

“If you like, I can see that he doesn’t do that anymore.”

“Really?”  

“Yes.  The wall panel is a necessity, not a privilege.  Remember what I said about improving your habitat?  If it’s in my power, I’ll make it happen.”

Vegeta wrapped himself in the blanket and we sat on the small chairs, bringing us down to the same level.  The chair in the corner no longer looked up to supporting the weight of a human.

“Can you get me more vids?” he asked.  “I feel like I’ve watched everything. And more games.”

I wondered if this could be managed.  Illuminary Inc had carefully prescribed viewing and other media for the Saiyans.  I could argue for a change up, but that might take a long time for media to be selected or created, and I’d probably have to come up with an argument for it and write the parameters for the new media myself.  Then I remembered that I had downloaded a bunch of movies and documentaries onto a drive and brought it with me to watch on my display in case there was no entertainment here. I could load that onto his media server.  Romances and horrors - he was going to have his horizons bust wide open.

“Yeah, I think I can do that.  Would you like more adult-orientated stuff?”

He was confused by this.  “What do you mean?”

“I mean, stuff that grown ups watch.”

I watched him as he made the realization that he’d been watching, by implication, kids’ stuff.  “Yeah. More adult stuff, please.”

“Anything else?”

He was silent a long time while he thought of it, then looked sheepish as he suggested, “More people to meet?”

That would have been a hard one until recently.  “I’m not sure I can get you more visitors in the flesh, but I can get you remote conferencing with other Saiyans.  We’re trialing that, and I will put you on the list, okay?”

“You mean, like, talk to them, like we do with the teacher?”

“Exactly.  We set up a few text chatrooms and video call channels.  Sound good?”

His face transformed with joy.  “Yeah!” Then immediately fell again.

“What is it?”

“What if the others don’t _want_ to talk to me?”

I almost smiled.  Such an ordinary teenaged sentiment.  “They will. Don’t worry.”

When Yamcha announced over the stereo that he was back with hot chocolate I went through, noticing that Rifleman seemed to have quit the observation room.  Yamcha had set the mugs down on the ledge before the window.

“How do I get them to you?” he asked.

“Just hit the override button on the wall next to you.  It’ll be logged, and Rifleman will have to write up a report, but I don’t care.”  Yamcha did so, and the light above the door changed from green to red. I opened the door and put my hands out for the mugs.

“Is one of these for you?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“How’re you going to drink it?”

I hadn’t thought of that.  I was wearing a full body suit.  “Um. I’ll figure something out.”

“Everything going well in there?”

I smiled, my throat tightening, feeling conflicted about my answer.  “Yes. He doesn’t get many visitors. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind meeting you.”

“Happy to oblige a pretty lady,” he said.

I pulled a face at his attempt to flatter.  I thought Yamcha was extremely handsome, but I wasn’t about to tell him so.

Vegeta came back into the room to take his hot chocolate from me.  They were fairly fancy, with rapidly melting blobs of whipped cream on top.  Nice. He sipped cautiously. He eyes came up to meet mine. Then he sipped again.

“Mmm!”

“Do you like it?”

In reply he drank more, then sat heavily on the bed in a mock swoon.  “Holy moley, that is good!”

I smiled to see his enjoyment and then contemplated my own mug.  

“Vegeta, how well can you control your power?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, can you suppress surges or anything like that?”

“I can suppress it entirely,” he told me with some pride.  He pointed at two lit-up display bars on the wall near the ceiling.  They were a gradient from green to red, like on a sound level. One was set to maximum and the other was close to the top end of the scale.  There were similar graphs for each child in the research unit, but they didn’t work very accurately when the kids were in proximity to each other.  For a single-Saiyan generator they might work very well. “Watch this!”

The less-full level began dropping through green, amber and red until finally there was not a single bit of the scale lit.

“Wow!  And how long can you hold it for?”

“A couple of hours.  Probably longer, but Rifleman comes and tells me off if the capacitor charge starts to get into the orange.”

“Can you still hold it down if you get a surprise or upset?”

“Yes.  Why?”

I made my way over to the far side of the room and leaned against the desk.  What I was considering was taking a risk.

“I want to drink my hot chocolate.  So keep your power down, and don’t get surprised, all right?”

I flipped back the hood of my suit slowly.  Vegeta stared, his eyes like saucers.

“Are you sure you should be doing that?” he asked.

“Are you keeping your power down?”

We both looked to the scale, and it remained dark.  Even if he had been generating power I would have been okay.  Smooth current just flowed out through a Saiyan’s contact with the floor or furniture.  It was the surges that arced out from their bodies that were dangerous. I sipped my drink, a little nervous, but trying not to show it.  Unless Vegeta had a meltdown I was fine.

“Er, Doctor Briefs, is it usual to take off your hood like that?” Yamcha asked over the intercom.

“Not usual, but it’s fine,” I said.  “This is pretty good hot chocolate!”

“I got it from the wardroom.  Us officers get the good stuff.”

Vegeta was still staring at me in open astonishment.

“Lieutenant, why don’t you introduce yourself?” I asked Yamcha.

I gulped my cup quickly while Yamcha spoke.  “Hiya! I’m Lieutenant Bandido, but you can call me Yamcha.”

Vegeta’s attention was diverted to the man outside the window.  “I’m...Vegeta.”

“How’re you, Vegeta?”

“Uh.  Okay. Why are you here?”

“Just looking after the young lady and seeing that she doesn’t come to any trouble while she’s onboard.”

“I’m not going to cause trouble,” Vegeta replied.

“Buddy, you’re not the only one I have to worry about!  There’s five thousand people on board.”

“There’s _what?_ ”

I looked at the scale again, and so did Vegeta, but it stayed black.  But it was clear we were both uncomfortable with the risk.

“Didn’t they tell you how many people were on board?” Yamcha asked.

“No,” said Vegeta.  “I know I’m on a boat, and there are other people on board, but they never said that many!  How can a ship have so many people? That’s ridiculous!”

“I won’t argue with that.”

Vegeta turned to me, scowling.  “Five thousand people, and I get to see two of them?”

I reached up to flip the hood down again.  “I know. It’s not fair.”

“Yeah!” he said, standing up.  “And I’m powering the ship and there’s that many people on board?”

“Careful with that mug,” I said.  “You’re going to spill it.”

He sat down again, and looking more glum, he drank the rest of the chocolate.

“Why do they keep me a secret?” he asked.

A very hard question, and one I hadn’t had to answer before.  “Illuminary Inc have their reasons”

“What reasons?”

“Reasons I don’t agree with.”

Vegeta rolled his eyes.  He was well used to having information withheld.

...

We spent much of the rest of the time setting up the updated gaming rig I had brought with me in the equipment case, and I sent messages back to HQ asking that he be put on the group conference test group, though unfortunately it was already night time there.  It took a while to build up the goodwill I had lost by not telling Vegeta why he was a secret. Yamcha took some calls and left for a while. When he returned he spoke through the intercom.

“Excuse me, Bulma - I mean, Doctor Briefs - but the captain has requested you join him and his guests for dinner tonight.  Dinner is in half an hour.”

I looked at Vegeta, kneeling next to me, constructing his avatar on the wall panel.

“I had been thinking of having my dinner here,” I told him.

“Um, dining with the Captain is a really big deal,” Yamcha pointed out.  “I’ve never been asked before.”

“Did he ask you tonight?”

“As your escort, yes.”

Both boy and man stared at me expectantly.  Urgh. Who to disappoint?

“You should go with him,” Vegeta said.  “I’ve had the power off too long and the capacitor is running close to orange.  If I have to keep it low long enough for us to have dinner, Granling and Rifleman are going to come in and start shouting.”

“That’s very gracious of you,” I told Vegeta.

“What’s gracious got to do with it?  I still have to live with Rifleman when you’re gone.  I don’t want to pee him off more than I need to. He’s already peed off that you made him turn the wall panel back on.”

“Sorry.”

I followed Yamcha back to our berths with my head in a cloud of dour thoughts.

“Y’okay?” Yamcha asked.  “I didn’t mean to pressure you into coming to dinner.”

“Yes you did.”

“Oh.  Sorry.  I guess I did, but not if you didn’t want to.”

“It’s okay.”

I changed into the fanciest shirt and pants I had brought.  I had not packed with “big deal” dinners in mind.

The dinner was boring.  The Captain was apparently curious about my precocious career, and professed to be fascinated by Illuminary Inc and Saiyan power, which I took to be bullshit after he admitted that he had not once visited the Saiyan on his own vessel.

“The minders have told me that it’s Illuminary Inc practice to not allow visits,” he pointed out.

“It is.  But I’m sure there would have been an exception for the Captain of the ship.”

“I wouldn’t like to make the child feel like a spectacle.  If he had too many visitors he may feel like a monkey in a cage.”

“That’s exactly what he is,” I couldn’t help retorting.  What the Captain made of that, I’m not sure. For the rest of the dinner I let the other officers present take the conversation and paid no heed to it.

Even Yamcha was downcast as we walked back to our quarters.  “It doesn’t seem right how the boy gets treated,” he ventured when we reached my door.

“It’s not, and you only know the half of it.”  Then I feared I had said too much, so I said more, trying to justify my words.  “This is the worst set-up I’ve seen so far. That boy has been utterly neglected.  Rifleman should be fired from his minder position!”

“If it helps, I’ll put in a report about what I saw and heard.  He doesn’t seem like someone who should be taking sole care of a kid.”

“He’s not, and thank you.”

He smiled down at me and I smiled back.  He must’ve been nearly a foot taller than me.  His smile widened into a grin making me catch my breath.  Did I mention he was handsome?

“I’ll do whatever I can to help.  It’s good to see you smile again.”

My heart started to race.  “You, too.”

He laughed and I blushed.  What an idiot I was!

“See you in the morning, Bulma!”

Despite Vegeta’s situation, I went to bed smiling to myself.

...

Vegeta was watching me again.

I pulled my hood up after finishing the lunch we had shared in his habitat.  I had spent the morning encouraging him to tell me things about himself. I was worried that he didn’t have a very strong sense of himself, and that he’d absorbed the message from his minders that he was unimportant and uninteresting.  I got him to show me his art, though he complained that he hadn’t done any for a long time, so these were “not that good”. He played me the guitar, and was pretty good for someone who had only been learning five months. I found a stash of needlepoint work under his artwork, which he was dismayed to have uncovered.  One in particular was very good - a large one of a tiger.

“I don’t do it anymore,” he told me hotly, red as a beet.

“Why not?  It seems like you had a talent for it.”

He looked positively angry at that.  “Only _girls_ do needlepoint.”

“Why did you do it before, if you think it’s only for girls?”

“My old minder, Sally, taught me.”

“I don’t think needlepoint is only for girls.  I think it’s for anyone who wants to do it.”

“I just didn’t know any better back then.  Men don’t do _crafts_ like that.”

I looked at his furious, red countenance and had a stab at where he’d picked up this conviction.

“Did Rifleman tell you that?”

“Yes.  I was making an idiot of myself until he came along.”

“No, Vegeta.   _Rifleman_ is the idiot.”

He didn’t strike me as an effeminate boy at all, which was maybe why he was so mortified by this evidence of something he’d been told was feminine.  Still, he must be proud of them enough that he’d not thrown them out. He shoved them all roughly to the back of the shelf.

What he had been most keen to show me was what he could do on the gym equipment.  He could climb the rope using only his hands. He could benchpress his own weight.  He could sprint on the treadmills top speed. Most impressive of all, to me, he could lift himself up by his arms on the treadmills hand rests, curl up and over until his head was down and feet were up, then straighten into a handstand, all in one motion.  Exercise of any fashion was his passion, and his face glowed with pride when I applauded him. What a shocking waste of a natural athlete to be caged like a rodent with just a hamster wheel to play with.

“I’ve done better,” he told me, “but I’m out of practice.”

“Why are you out of practice?” I asked suspiciously.

He shrugged.  “I didn’t feel like it lately.”

“Since the fade started?”

“Maybe.  Or maybe before.  I don’t know. It all seems pointless.”

“I don’t think it’s pointless if you enjoy it.”

He shrugged again, his whole manner shutting down and becoming distant again - the despondency swallowing him again after its reprieve.  I let him off the hook, not able to say anything more, the poison in him seeping into me. What Illuminary Inc did to these kids was absolutely criminal.  He could barely manage to hold eye contact for more than a second, though he would stare whenever he wasn’t being directly looked at.

Now he was watching me pull my hood back up.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said suddenly.  “I can keep my power down so you don’t have to cover your face.”

“Are you sure?  Can you keep your power nice and even?”

“Yes.  I won’t get too close, just to be safe.”

“You don’t get to see many faces, do you?”

He shook his head.  He’d grown used to me enough to not even try to hide his staring.

“I guess you miss all your nursery mates, too?”

“Yes,” he said.  “I miss the nurses, too.”

“Yeah?  What do you miss about them?”

Unexpectedly he colored.  “Never mind.”

“What?  You can tell me.  I thought I was your new friend.”

He narrowed his eyes on me, instantly put back on guard.  “I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to.  Am I wrong? Are we not friends?”

“You’re my _psychologist_ ,” he pointed out.  Ouch. Not that I was meant to be making friends with him, but I guess in the last day I’d been projecting a bit of Goku on to Vegeta.  They were both naive - but only up to a point.

“All right then.  As your psychologist, you can tell me whatever you like.  Tell me why you miss the nurses, or not. It’s up to you.”

He was silent for a time, picking his guitar back up and strumming through several chord progressions.  

“I don’t know.  I guess I miss them because if you were hurt or scared, usually they’d come see what was wrong, and maybe give you a hug.  And...my brothers and sisters, too, sometimes.”

“I guess you haven’t had many hugs lately?”

He shook his head, then his lips curled into something like a smile, but far more bitter.  “Who would want to hug Rifleman, anyway?”

“Would you like a hug?” I asked, not sure how he would react.  His focus snapped back on me, speechless for a moment. His face was still a bit pink from admitting he even liked the hugs, and didn’t cool down yet.

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” he pointed out.

“I didn’t say there was.  I asked you if you wanted a hug.”

Another long moment, and then he dropped his head, defeated.  “Yes.”

I came over to the bed, and he lowered his guitar to the ground so I could put my arms around him.  He was stiff at first, but then he sagged against me, his hair tickling against my face as his arms went around me.  I almost jumped in panic, suddenly remembering that I didn’t have my hood on, and I was actually touching a Saiyan without protection!  Skin to hair - maybe not as bad as skin to skin, but if Vegeta lost control at this moment I could be in a lot of danger. Slowly, I released him with one arm and tried to pull up my hood with it, but I couldn’t reach back far enough in the position I was in.  He hugged me tighter, pulling his cheek onto my shoulder. For a second his cheek brushed my neck, but then I was able to lean my head back, clear of his hair. I was still not in a good position if he lost control and arced lightning all over the place.

I was about to ask him to let go, when I felt the first tremor go through him.

“Vegeta?”

He shook, rocked by the rhythm of silent sobs.  Oh god, this kid was breaking my heart. I mentally crossed my fingers and patted his back, rubbing comforting circles between his shoulder blades.  He squeezed me even tighter. Skin hunger. I’d studied it, as it was within the scope of my thesis, and it was a real thing. From Bardock’s story I suspected very much that he had suffered from it, and that all solo generator Saiyans did.  Vegeta had likely not had a hug like this since he was six.

As I hugged him, my sympathy, pity, and pain flowed freely, but I also took some comfort, too.  Perhaps I had also needed a hug. Actually, there was no ”perhaps” about it. I _needed_ a hug.  Living alone without friends and working at Illuminary Inc was torturing me.  My eyes strayed to the observation room, but Yamcha had stepped away.

We stayed like that until Vegeta’s crying had abated.  I didn’t want to be the one who ended his first hug in years.

“Bulma,” he asked eventually.  “Can I have another hot chocolate?”

“You certainly can.”

Later, with our hot chocolates and Yamcha reinstated to the observation room, I uploaded my movies to his media server and we watched a comedy horror - a PG13 flick with some gross-out humor and tension.  It would be outside his experience, but hopefully not outside his ability to handle We sat side by side on the mesh-embedded settee to watch it. It turned out he loved it, though many of the jokes flew over his head and I had to explain some of them.   Vegeta sat several inches away from me to begin with, but managed over the course of the movie to edge close enough that his shoulder nudged mine. As dinnertime approached, Rifleman returned from whatever skiving he was doing in the antechamber.

“What the hell are you doing with your hood down?” he barked over the intercom, scaring the both of us.  Vegeta’s head whipped around to look and a spark leapt from his nose to mine, making me jump up from the chair. _Fuck!_  I rubbed my nose, but it was only the tiniest of shocks.  Vegeta was looking at me in horror.

“I’m sorry!” he whispered.

The other two didn’t seem to have noticed.  

“It’s fine,” Yamcha was saying, repeating what I had been telling him since yesterday.  “He’s completely stable.”

“And you would know how much on the subject of Saiyans?”

“It is fine!” I said.  “Vegeta’s power is under his control.”  Vegeta was looking at me stormily, knowing this was only 99.9% true.  Still, he’d had a surprise while watching a horror movie, and this tiny shock was the only result.

“Well, then, he can damn well control his power back up to one hundred percent!  The capacitors are half drained!”

I looked up to the light display and saw the second bar in the orange.  We hadn’t noticed.

“You should go,” said Vegeta, getting up to press his hand against the far wall.  “I need to power up.”

“I’ll come back later.  You can watch the rest of the movie without me - I’ve seen it before.”

As soon as I stepped back into the observation room, Rifleman was in my face.  “This is my duty area, Missy! Who do you think gets in trouble if someone isn’t following procedure here?  If you get your face fried off? I do! I won’t have you entering the cage without full protection.”

“You’re one to talk about following procedure!” I replied.  “You’re supposed to socialize with the Saiyan, not shove their meals through the door and run, or take away their essential life comforts because you’ve let the relationship deteriorate to the point of dysfunction!  Your cowardice has denied Vegeta of something he desperately needs - a friend!”

“I’m not here to be a friend!  I’m SSA Navy, and we’re at war!”

“I don’t care that there’s a war!  If you want a Saiyan to power your ship, that comes with obligations!”

“Wait, hold up!” Yamcha was saying as Rifleman wound up to yell back at me.  “That’s an order, Petty Officer!”

Rifleman looked like he was about to explode at taking that order from a much younger man, but he held it in.  Yamcha was a Lieutenant, and technically outranked him, after all.

“Bulma,” Yamcha said.  “Why don’t we let things calm down here.  We’ll go get our dinner.”

I supposed I wouldn’t get much further by arguing with this oaf, so I agreed.  I waved goodbye to Vegeta, who was watching the exchange. Without the intercom on he may not have been able to hear what we were saying, but who knew what he made of it?

“I’m reporting you,” Rifleman growled as we left.

“I’m reporting _you_ ,” I promised in return.

...

“That man is an ass, a jerk, and a...fill in blank here!” I complained to Yamcha, still fuming as we ate lasagna in the wardroom.

“I’m not arguing with you.  Look, let’s not talk about Rifleman.  He’s a dick and talking about how much of a dick he is won’t change the fact.  Let’s talk about something else. I was born in Brazil. How about you?”

“Brazil?” I hadn’t detected that in his voice.  “Your English is great.”

“It should be - I’ve been speaking English since I started school.”

“How come?  Didn’t you grow up in Brazil?”

“I did, but my father was Navy, too, from the home states, and so I went to the school on the base at Natal, and all the lessons were in English.  I guess I spoke a little English, because of my dad, but we spoke mostly Portuguese at home.”

Before I knew it I was successfully distracted.  Yamcha and I spent well over an hour lingering over our dinner and then cups of tea, talking about our childhoods and career paths.

We strolled back to the door of my berth, and then hung around my door, still talking about how he went home to his avó in Fortaleza every Christmas.  I found myself leaning back against it, my body bowed towards him. _Classic body language of sexual invitation_ , I observed of myself.  He leaned over me, his hand reaching out frequently to touch my arm in ever so casual emphasis.   _Classic signs of sexual suggestion_.  But he stood straighter and put distance between us whenever anyone else stepped into the corridor and saluted at a few of them.  I decided we needed privacy.

“Do-do you want to come inside?” I asked, face flaming red.  

“Ah, better not,” he replied with his eyes still on the uniformed woman striding past.

“Oh.  Okay.”

“See you later.”

I went inside, wondering if I had misread the situation.  And probably I had - I didn’t know what I was doing with boys, or at least boys I was romantically interested in.  I wish they’d offered a course in forming relationships at university, because I would have gladly taken it.

I opened a book on my display, preparing to do some pre-bedtime novel munching, and then I remembered that I’d told Vegeta I would come back later, and it had completely flown my mind!  I felt like an absolute heel. There I was worrying about closing the deal with Yamcha and simultaneously letting Vegeta down. I decided to go back now. Rifleman must surely be off duty now, so that had to be a good thing.  I went next door and pschyed myself up to talk to Yamcha again, afraid I would look needy or pushy for being back so soon. But when I knocked, another man opened the door. I could see the room beyond, and though it was the same size as mine, it had four berths in it instead of two.

“Hi, is Yamcha...home?”

“He was a little while ago, but he’s gone out again.”

“Do you know how long he’ll be?”

“Nope, sorry.  I’ll tell him you were looking for him shall I?  You’re the visitor, right?”

“Yeah.”

Back in my own room I felt dumb and frustrated.  Yamcha probably had friends, or even a girlfriend or something on board, and had gone out to meet them, and now I was stuck here not able to go anywhere.  Unless… I could remember the way. I suddenly wasn’t sure if I was allowed to be walking around the ship alone, but Yamcha was supposed to be at my beck and call, which he wasn’t, and no one had expressly me told not to.

I slipped out and made my way through the maze, taking a couple of wrong turns but realized it quickly.  The people I passed only glanced from my face to the blue visitor’s tag on my lapel before ignoring me, so I guessed my wandering was fine.

When I opened the door to the generator’s antechamber I was surprised to find a young enlisted seaman sitting at the desk, a firearm laid across it.  I almost screamed.

“Who are you?” he asked, also taken by surprise.  He stood up, reaching for the weapon.

“Doctor Bulma Briefs, the research psychologist from Illuminary Inc!” I said, automatically putting my hands up.  He sniggered and left the gun where it was.

“Oh.  Yeah, I heard you were onboard.  Didn’t think you’d be visiting at night time, though.”

“Who are you?”

“Seaman Dagner.  I guard the Saiyan at night time.  Well, sometimes. I share the duty with a few others.”

“Is Vegeta still awake?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“You don’t ever talk to him?”

He gave me a strange look.  “That’s against orders.”

It was like Granling and Rifleman were intentionally isolating Vegeta even more than Illuminary Inc’s usual punitive standard.  I glowered at the man.

“Well, I’m going in.”

“You should hurry.  It’s lights out in ten minutes.”

When I went into the observation room I belatedly remembered that Vegeta was a fourteen year old boy who expected privacy at this time of night, but luckily he was only running on the treadmill while he watched a vid on the wall panel.  Now it was dark the habitat was lit by red lights, something I had noticed in some other areas of the ship, and the wall panel glowed bright and blue through the red gloom.

I pressed the intercom button.

“Evening, Vegeta.”

He nearly fell off the treadmill in surprise before pausing the vid.  “What are you _doing_ here?”

“I said I would come back, so I came back.”

“No one comes here at night!”

“Should I go?”

“No!”

“I don’t intend to stay long.  I just didn’t want you to think I had lied to you about coming back.”  

I went to my case to haul out the suit again, but he said, “You don’t have to put that on.”

“Don’t I?  I’m not sure if you heard what Rifleman said, but he was very insistent.”

“I heard.”

“You also zapped me on the nose.”

“That was only because he made me so angry for a second, yelling at you.  It won’t happen again. I swear.”

I looked at my suit.  That was a lot of faith he was asking me to put in him, an untested fourteen year old.  But Gine had done the same with Bardock when Bardock was the same age - and more. At least I wasn’t planning on making out with this Saiyan.  Then again, I wasn’t a dumb, risk-taking teenager. No, I was _twenty_ now.

But the suit took time to put on and take off, and I hated the damn thing.  I was only going in for a minute or two. I also imagined what a display of trust it would seem to Vegeta, and I’m afraid that was what swayed me.  As a gift for him, I would risk myself.

“Okay, then, power down and let me in.”

He grinned and skipped to the wall to let me enter.  I stepped over the threshold with my eyes on the darkened light display.  Vegeta freaked me out by immediately bounding over to me.

“Woah! Slow down there!”

He skidded to a stop, his face falling, but his excitement burned its way to the surface again in a moment.  He danced on the spot like a boy much younger than fourteen, all signs of his earlier cynicism and withdrawal gone.

“Wow, someone’s in my habitat!” he crowed.  “Can I touch you?” He was already reaching out a finger.

“Vegeta, I’m really not comfortable with that.”

“But we touched before when you had your hood off.”  

So he had noticed that?  Of course he had - he’d probably been just as aware of it as I had been.

“You’ve seen how I can control it,” he urged more seriously.  “I can hold it down for hours. Sometimes I think it’s easier to keep it off than keep it on!  I think I am almost done with my fade.”

“I think you could be right,” I admitted.  The last step would be his inability to put out power without concentration.  

“Then it will be alright.”

It probably would be.  Gine had been fine. I took a deep breath and held out my finger.  Vegeta reached out, and very slowly, touched his fingertip to mine.  Nothing happened. Vegeta was staring at where our skin touched, and then he touched all our fingertips together.  He dragged his fingertips down the front of my fingers, and it tickled. I caught his fingers, entwining them with mine to stop him, and was about to tell him that that was enough, but he gasped.  He was shaking. Shaking and staring at our hands. I gently extracted myself from his grasp. He manfully tried to hold down the emotion that was threatening to overflow, and _then_ I remembered Toma 123’s spectacular meltdown.  I took a few steps back.

“I think that’s all I have time for,” I lied.

“Don’t go yet!”

“I can’t stay”

“Are you coming back tomorrow?” he begged me.

“Yes.  but Vegeta, calm down.”

“The power is still flat,” he said, divining my true concern.  “Please, come back!”

“I will come back tomorrow, but it’s my last day here,” I told him.

“Take me with you!”  His eyes were suddenly full of unshed tears.

In hindsight I should have known this would happen.  If I gave him the attention and kindness he needed, taking myself away again was a cruelty in itself.  I covered my face with my hands, trying to block out the guilt.

“I can’t.”

“But my fade is practically over!”

“I don’t have the authority or the equipment.”

“You don’t need equipment to move me!  You can call them, and get the authority!”

“Even if you don’t need the equipment, that is not procedure, and they won’t allow it.  I’m sorry!”

He turned away from me, and threw himself face down on the bed.

“You’ll see me at Illuminary Inc,” I told him.  “You’ll be joining my study group!” Though not for long by the looks of it.

”I just want this to be over!” he cried.  “I just want to be able to walk down a street and touch people like a normal person!  And I feel like it’s never going to happen!”

He was right.  It was never going to happen, and how would I be able to stand by and let his simple dream be taken from him?  I had already failed Toma 123 and the rest of my study group.

“I’m sorry.”  I glanced at the bar - still all black - and edged to the bed and placed one hand on his back.  He flinched and then pushed back into the contact, kneeling to look at me.

“Bulma, please help me!”

“I will.  I’m going to do everything I can.”

Before I could stop him he threw his arms around my neck and pulled me into a hug.  Though my heart almost stopped with fright, I wasn’t electrocuted. I was fine. I let it go on for a little while, but not too long.

“Vegeta, I’ve got to go now.”  I suddenly felt eyes on the back of my neck - some guilty reaction to the thoughts I was now entertaining.

He let me go and watched me leave.

I practically ran back to my room.  I didn’t pass as many people on the way back as I had on the way there, which was lucky because I was sure my face looked like I’d been chopping onions for the last twenty minutes.  I burst into my room, closed the door behind me and then screamed, leaping back in fright. Yamcha was there, sitting on my bed.

“Where have you been?” he asked.  He looked worried. “Are you okay?”

“I went back to see Vegeta,” I admitted in a quiet voice.

“Why didn’t you wait and get me to take you?”

“I would have, but you weren’t in your room, and...it seemed like you didn’t want to spend anymore time with me, so I went alone.”

He frowned.  “Sorry, I was in the bathroom.  Have you been crying?”

I stared at him defiantly, and he stared back, his face solemn.

“Did someone do something or say something?” he asked.  

“No.  It’s not that.”  I felt the tears threaten again.  I wanted someone on my side right then, and I needed and willed it to be him.

He stepped closer.  “What is it, then?”

I felt the words gather on my tongue but held them back.

“You’re wrong by the way,” he said, trying to coax a response out of me  “I _do_ want to spend more time with you.  I just can’t let people see me going into your room.  It’s _kinda_ against the rules.  But when I knocked and you didn’t answer...no one was around.  I hoped you wouldn’t mind if I snuck inside to wait for you.”

He reached out and took my hands, gently.

“Does that cheer you up?”

This situation was so incongruous with my main concern that I snorted, but that broke the control that was holding the tears back.  The snort became ugly heaves of sobs, and I hung my head to hide them.

“Bulma?”

He gathered me in very slowly, holding me against his chest.

“What’s wrong?  Is it Vegeta?”

I nodded my head.

“Oh, shit.  I know they mistreat him-”

“You don’t know the worst of it!”

“But it’s going to be over soon, right?  He’s going to be rehabilitated and set free soon, right?”

“No!  He isn’t!”  Ah, was I telling him?  Yes, I was telling him. Yamcha was a good guy - he’d see what was right and wrong.  “You have no idea what they’re going to do to him! They’ve lied to him his whole life - they lie to all the Saiyans!  They don’t get set free! After they fade, they’re trapped in service until they die, or else _executed!_ ”

“What?  You’re not serious?”  He pulled me away from himself to look me in the eye.

“I am totally serious!”

He stared at me, and I could see him adding it up mentally.  “That would be a huge conspiracy. Everyone at Illuminary Inc knows this?”

“No, not at Illuminary Inc.  Some of them must do, but most don’t.  But I bet everyone at the Weapons Research Unit knows.”

“ _Weapons Research?_ ”  Whatever he knew about that place, it seemed enough to make him hesitate and entertain the possibility.  “If you know all this, why do you work for Illuminary Inc, then? For that matter, _how_ do you know?”

“I can’t tell you,” I said, realizing it in the same moment as I spoke.  “Because you can’t ever tell, Yamcha. But trust me. Even if it was just Illuminary Inc, it would be bad enough.  That boy has been locked in that single room for eight years. He’s only had contact with a handful of people in that time, and rarely been touched.  He likely has developmental damage that may never be healed, but it won’t get the chance to be healed, because the Weapon’s Research Unit at Barstow is going to _deepen_ it!  He’s going to be turned into a soldier, whether he wants to or not, to be broken down and remoulded into a tool for the military.”

“I’m in the military,” he pointed out.  “I was broken down and built back up, What’s wrong with that?”

“Were you _fourteen_ when you signed up?  Were you forced into it under the threat of death?  Were you forced to live in secret, apart from the world, with no leave and no reprieve?”

Understanding dawned in his eyes.  “No.”

“That’s what’s going to happen to _him_ if I don’t do something!  I already lost six Saiyan kids this way, taken from me...”  I squeezed Yamcha’s arms hard at the thought of those six and Vegeta having their dreams crushed to nothing.  Would Vegeta even submit to become a soldier? I suddenly wondered how many of the kids made it to quarantine already depressed, only to be pushed over the edge into suicidality by the future they faced.  Maybe they let those that controlled their fates decide, or maybe they ended it themselves.

“What _are_ you going to do?” Yamcha asked.

I stared at him, still not sure how far I could trust him.  “I’m not going to let it happen,” I said slowly. “Are you… Would you consider-”

He stepped away from me.

“Bulma!  I can’t help you do something like...what you’re thinking!”

_Shit._

“I took an oath - I’m - I _have_ to be loyal to my command.  If I helped you do something against my orders, or that I knew would be damaging to our mission, I’d be court-marshalled!  I don’t know what immoral shit the Weapons Research Unit is up to, but I’m Navy, and I believe in what we’re doing! We’re out here defending the SSA from our enemies  It’s super-important shit, Bulma!. I believe in it, and I want to stay part of it. I’d like to set that boy free, too, but I can’t help you with whatever you’re planning.”

“I’m not planning anything like that,” I backtracked.  “And I don’t need your help.”

He relaxed a little.  I stared at him, judging, calculating, weighing up risks.  Okay, he wouldn’t help, but he did have sympathy.

“As I am not planning anything, you’re not going to see anything or hear anything, or... _notice_ anything unusual, tomorrow,” I told him, and his eyes widened a fraction.  “But if you felt like taking bathroom break at about eleven thirty while I’m in the habitat, be sure to let me know.  The jetcopter is scheduled for midday, right?”

“Right.”

“Perfect.”

“Bulma, if he went missing-”

“If Vegeta _did_ go missing tomorrow, it would hardly make a difference to the ship’s mission.  He’s _days_ away from total breakdown of generator capability.  Honestly, they could lose him at any moment, and they know it.  Illuminary Inc already has a couple of temporary replacement kids lined up, ready to send on the next jetcopter.  It would be nothing that anyone isn’t already planning for. Not that there’s any reason to think that he _would_ go missing tomorrow.  Do you agree?”

“...Yeah.” he said softly, looking very grave.  He paced to the end of the room and back again. “I have to have full deniability.”

“You will, because nothing is going to happen.”

He cringed and covered his face with his hands.  “Would I be doing this if you weren’t so pretty?”

“You’re not doing anything.  And you’re not doing anything for the sake of a boy who’s entire life has been stolen from him.”

“I’m sorry it’s like that.  That poor kid.”

_Oh, thank god_.  “One more thing.  I need to borrow a power drill, if you can find one.”

“What for?”

I was surprised he would ask after all that.  “I need to attach some monitoring equipment to the wall of the habitat.  Can you do that?”

He considered it.  “Yes. I’ll get it first thing.  Oh, jeez, I should have known you’d be trouble the moment I saw you.  Does Illuminary Inc know they’ve got a subversive in their midst?”

“What kind of question is that to ask someone who is totally not planning anything subversive?”

He smiled weakly, then stepped closer.  “I can’t be fraternizing with the subversive element.”

“Then you’re safe in my hands.”

His smile grew a little wider and he leaned in, one hand braced on the door next to my head, and the other came up to smooth my purple-dyed hair behind my ear.  I held my breath while my heart started to thunder - a curious thrill not wholly unrelated to fear.

“Where are your hands?” he asked.  “I don’t feel I am in them yet.”

I raised my hands feeling faintly ridiculous, looking either way at them.  

“ _Here?”_

I put them around his waist, hoping that was the right thing to do, and he grinned before he lowered his lips to mine.

My first kiss was potent and overwhelming.  It didn’t last long, which was good because I was almost panting with breathlessness by the end of it.  I couldn’t believe this was happening. He was so handsome. He was _older_ , and a real, proper adult.  

He drew me into him with one hand, and I found myself swaying against his body, clinging to the back of his shirt, unable to tell which way was up as he kissed me again, his tongue sliding against mine.  This was an unbelievable ending to an insane day. Since boarding the Behemoth I’d come unmoored from reality, and instead I floated in a sea of exquisite and turbulent emotions, snatched this way and that by the tides of woe and joy.

He walked us to the bed.  I sat heavily, taking the opportunity to catch my breath before he followed me down, surging over me like a wave, till we sank back onto the mattress.  He lay half on top of me, one leg between mine, and I had never known how satisfying the weight of a man above me could feel until that moment. He hand stroked my ribs and up over my breast while I clung to him, feeling his strong back and the muscles that were only hinted at under his uniform shirt.

It felt so good.  It felt so good it was scary, like if things carried on as they were it would all be over too fast, and wasted.  I was dazed, overwhelmed by touch, from my lips, tongue, hands, breasts, my whole body where it was pressed against his.  I could feel something nestled against my hip, something that suggested he was enjoying this, maybe as much as I was. The thought of it burned me up with lust.

It wasn’t until Yamcha plucked the hem of my blouse from my trousers and slid his hand inside that I realized that this might not just be my first _kiss_.

I must have frozen or something because Yamcha raised his head.

“Is this okay?” he asked.

I nodded.

He removed his hand and instead went for the buttons at the front, and I watched, fascinated as he fumbled one-handed with the top one.  It eluded him, and he laughed.

“A little help here?”

I let go of him to undo it for him.  My hands trembled. Yamcha frowned.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes.  I’m more than okay!”  But my voice sounded weird, even to me.

He watched me, starting to look unhappy.  “You don’t have to buy my silence with sex, you know,” he said.  “I thought you already liked me, or else I wouldn’t have… Just say stop and I will.”

It hadn’t even occurred to me that he might see things that way.  “But I _do_ like you!”

“Then...do you have a boyfriend or something?”

“No.  I’ve never had a boyfriend.”  Now why did I say that? I blushed red and giggled out of sheer embarrassment, keeping my eyes on the buttons.  Two open, three to go.

“Uh.  Really?  But you’re so…”

“So what?”

“Adorable.”

_Adorable?_  Huh.  “The dating pool is not so big when you’re homeschooled, and a fourteen year old doesn’t get much game at university.”

“Oh.”  He stroked my face, tilting my chin to look up at him.  He was grinning. “Poor little brainy girl.”

We made out for a while longer, my shirt left half-buttoned, until he raised himself to his elbows again.

“My roommate is going to wonder what I’m up to,” he said, panting slightly.  “I’d better go.”

I didn’t want him to, but at the same time I thought it was for the best.  Perhaps sex had been on offer, but I wasn’t ready for that, and he seemed to know it.

“Goodnight then.”

“Goodnight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for any OOC tendencies in Yamcha. In this story I needed him to be older than she was, and as she never had a Yamcha earlier in her life to be her boyfriend, she never had one, whereas I'm going to say that some other girl got Yamcha over his fear of women. Oh, well.


	9. Behemoth to Lac Brûlé - 2133

**CHAPTER NINE:  BEHEMOTH TO LAC BRÛLÉ 2133**

 

I didn’t sleep much that night between worrying about the morning and fantasizing about Yamcha making love to me here, or on the jetcopter.  Could we date? How often was he ashore? Where? I didn’t know.

He greeted me at my door in the morning with a grin and a portable drill.  We sat close together at breakfast, and I asked him my pressing questions. The Naval Base at San Jose was his home when he was on shore and otherwise not deployed, a long way from Victorville, and he was not rostered for shore leave for another three months.

As we approached the generator I dragged my head back out of the clouds. Vegeta’s stricken face through the glass was enough to make those butterflies in my stomach turn switch from dreamy fluttering to panicked flapping.  The distance to San Jose was irrelevant, as I wouldn’t be living in Victorville after tomorrow.

Rifleman followed us in, and I hoped and prayed he would soon grow bored and leave us, as he’d done the other times.  I pulled my suit on, hood, then went in, towing the case and holding the drill.

“What’s that for?” Rifleman asked.

“I have some extra monitoring equipment that I need to mount on the wall to monitor his brain waves while he sleeps.  It will connect wirelessly to the other biodata monitoring systems, and get sent back to HQ.”

”We can get an engineer to do that.”

“That’s not necessary.  I think I’m perfectly capable of putting two small screws in the wall.”

And he watched me do it, damn him.  I actually at that time I had very little clue how to drill holes in metal walls.  The drill slid off the wall several times, and I was wearing the bit down trying to force it through steel.   _ Surely a drill bit is hardener more than a bulkhead? _

“Can I try?” Vegeta asked me, itching to get his hands on something new.

“No, I’m getting there.”  I’d made one shallow dent.  The drill skidded again. When I looked over, Rifleman was laughing.

“It might be easier on the bathroom partition,” Vegeta suggested.  “It’s made of wood particle stuff and a thin sheet of metal.”

He was right - it was easier.  I got the machine hung on two screws, slightly wonky, but who cared - it was never going to be used.  By the time I was done, Rifleman had gone; less interested in my success than my failure.

“Vegeta, can you come outside with me?” I asked him.

He looked at me suspiciously before following me out.  

“Are we out here so that they can’t hear what we’re saying?”

“Yes.  I want to help you.  But you’ve got a choice to make before you can say yes.”

“What?”

We sat on the kiddie chairs while I laid it all out - what was likely to happen to him after his fade finished.  I had to watch his face shatter into pain and fear and rage, and I couldn’t help but feel like it was partly my fault. His power slipped his leash then; fat ropes of electricity shot from him and connected with the bars in front of us, blindingly bright.  I leapt up and pressed myself back against the glass door, preparing to leap back inside.

“Stop, Vegeta!  Please!”

“I can’t hurt you when you’re wearing your darn suit!”

“You can!  You’re too powerful, now!”

He stopped the electrical storm as quickly as he’d started it.

“I’ve seen it happen.  When you’ve faded, your power actually increases when you use it!”

Another surprise for him.  “Did they tell me anything true?” he yelled.

“Not much, no.”

“Darn this poop!”  He didn’t even know any real swear words to express his anger with, they had kept him so cloistered.  “Why do you want to help me, then? You’re one of them!”

“I’m not really.  I work for them, but only so that I could find my friend.  They stole my best friend from me because he was half-Saiyan.  His father had escaped. It was his father that told me what it was really like for Saiyans.”

He only looked slightly less skeptical.  “ _ How _ are you going to help me?”

“Hey, Doctor Briefs, I’m stepping out for a while,” Yamcha said over the intercom.  I glanced at my watch. Early, but that was good. The longer I had the better. I stepped back inside so that the microphone would pick up my voice.

“You’ll be back before twelve, right?”

“Correct.”

As soon as the door closed behind him I picked up the drill and the case.

...

Yamcha was back at five minutes to twelve.  By then I was ready to go, case and bags packed, watching the still form in the bed.

“He’s asleep?” Yamcha asked.

“Yes.  Saying goodbye took it right out of him,” I said.

Yamcha's eyes flicked rapidly between me and the bed.

“Aren’t we going to be late for the jetcopter?” I said.  “We should probably get going.”

“Yeah, let’s.”

Rifleman didn’t even get up to bid us goodbye as we left.

The wheeled case was slightly hard to push down the corridors with one hand.

“Can I help?” Yamcha asked.  I handed him my bag.

Up the elevator we went, and out on of the main corridors to the jepcopter deck.  He had to help me lift the case over the lip of the doorway. We crossed the deck to the copter, and one of the pilots took the case from me to put into the cargo space behind the passenger cabin.  He struggled to lift it with the top handle, and instead, grabbed the side handle with both hands to lift it high enough. Yamcha stepped away and boarded the craft.

“Careful, it’s fragile!” I said.

“It’s fucking heavy, is what it is,” the pilot said.  “What you got in here? Rocks?”

“Scientific equipment.”

He dumped the case on its side in the hold.

The flight back was completely different to the flight out there.  I was beside myself with worry about what was waiting for me ahead, and Yamcha was watching me with concern.

“Hey, whatever it is, wringing your hands over it won’t help.”

“Easy for you to say.”

He pulled me to a seat, around the corner from and out of view of the cockpit, then sat down and pulled me onto his lap.  He held me, rocking me, and I hid my face in the crook of his neck. 

“How old did you say you were?” he asked, stroking my hair.

“Twenty.”

“I’ve never met a girl like you before.”

Despite myself, I snorted at the cliche line.

“I’m not like all the other girls?”

He shrugged.  “You’re very brave.”

“You’re in the Navy.  You must know lots of brave women.”

“I guess.  But I think there must be a difference between the bravery to follow an order, and the bravery to disobey.  I’m not sure if I have that.”

My skin prickled in sudden dread.  “I think you do.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right.  I’m definitely not supposed to make out with the people I’m escorting, after all.”

I looked up, and he was grinning again, but only for a moment before he kissed me.

We took a break for Yamcha to heat and serve lunch, and then we continued our groping and kissing, reclined across three seats, before the pilot’s voice scared us both half to death.

“Better fasten those seatbelts back there - we’re in for some chop.”

As we sat up and straightened out our clothing I suddenly remembered my precious cargo and looked at the seats that separated the passenger cabin from the cargo, and nearly leaped out of my skin all over again.  Vegeta’s face was peering over the top between two headrests. I flashed him a wide-eyed look, and he scowled, disappearing out of sight again.

Strapped in, it turned out the pilot was not kidding.  I held Yamcha’s hand out of fright rather than amorousness as the jetcopter was bounced around in turbulence for at least an hour.  I was starting to feel sick before we began descending, and the pilot told us we would be landing at Barstow in twenty minutes.

“Do you think we will see each other again?” I asked Yamcha.  I was expecting the answer would be no. I was too inexperienced, too far away, but most of all, too dangerous for him to have any connection with.

“Who knows?” he said.  “I guess we’ll have to see how things play out.  Give me your number, at least.”

We pressed our wristbands together for several seconds until they both chimed - our details exchanged.  As we landed, he pulled his hand from mine.

Landing at Barstow, the sun was setting and the evening was cooling off.  Yamcha took me and my incredibly heavy travel case back to the gates of the Marine camp, where a car already waited.  We said our goodbyes in front of the sentry, unable to touch or say what we really wanted.

“It was...very nice to meet you, Lieutenant.”

“It was a pleasure to escort you, Doctor.”

The sentry struggled to lift the case.

“Put it on the back seat, would you?” I told him.

The car rolled away, and I was still looking out the back window to watch Yamcha recede into the distance when the top lid of the case on the back seat popped open, and Vegeta sat up out of it.

“That was horrid!” he said.

“Vegeta!  Keep down!  At least until we’ve passed out of the town.”

He did, wriggling out of the case and kicking it to the floor of the car.  “I can’t believe it! I’m free!”

He lay on his back, feet up, staring out of the window.  “It was freezing on that jepcopter thing. I'm still cold.”

I took off my light jacket and offered it to him, and he laid it over himself like a very inadequate blanket.

“Could you see out the drill holes at least?”

“Not most of the time.  Wow, the sky is so _ clear! _ ” he said.  Because there were no bars and no mesh between him and it.  I couldn’t help smiling at his joy, only to find myself blindsided by the non-sequitur that came next.  

“Who were you kissing back there?”

“No one that either of us is likely to see again,” I said, blushing.

He turned his head to me.  “Not your boyfriend?”

“No.”

It was dark by the time the car made it back to Victorville.  We’d watched the sun go down over the desert in a glow of warm oranges and blazing golds, and the shadows turning purple then black.

“I feel like everything is so...wide,” he said, his face glued to the window.

“It is.  The world is wide open.”

When the car pulled to a stop in the driveway at my house, Vegeta flitted up the pavement to the door, still barefoot and wearing only SSA Navy sweatpants and a t-shirt, while I unlocked the door as swiftly as I could.

Inside, I switched the lights on, having never gotten around to setting up a home butler service.  Not that Vegeta would have thought that weird. To him, everything was weird. He stalked slowly around the house, looking at everything, his expression somewhere between wonder and suspicion.  He was like a zoo animal in a new enclosure. He touched things - the carpet, the wallpaper, the microwave, the bed. Thinking of the bed, I wondered where we were going to sleep tonight. We couldn’t be here come morning.

“Are you hungry?” I asked.  “I could order Indian food.”  Whatever Dr Wright said, I thought the place around the corner was okay.

“Yes,” he said.  “Indian food is Tikka Masala and popadums, right?”

“It’s not just Tikka Masala.  It’s a whole range of dishes. It’s a whole group of culinary traditions in fact.”

“Oh.”  He looked sheepish.  His ignorance was painful to both of us, but for different reasons.

I ordered a variety of dishes with my wristband over my earpiece.  A text beeped as I hung up.

_ The crew on the Behemoth have discovered that Vegeta is missing.  Do you know anything about that? The base is sending military police over to chat about it _ .  It was from Yamcha.

“Oh, shit!”  I stood straight up, startling Vegeta, who was rifling through the fridge.  I had hoped that they would not check on Vegeta’s habitat until the capacitors wound down sometime around five on ship time, which would be eight our time.  And then I thought it would take them time to piece things together before coming after me. 

“Vegeta, we can’t wait for food, we’ve got to go now.”

He stopped and looked at me, all his curiosity and happiness replaced with bowstring tautness.

“What do we do?”

“I’m ordering a car.  Those pants are no good.  See if you can find some warmer clothes that fit you,” I said, motioning to the bedroom.  “They’re in the main bedroom.”

I made the call, then grabbed my bag and followed Vegeta.  Clothes were strewn all over the floor, but that was the same state I had left it in when I left for Barstow.  He had pulled on a pair of black sweatpants that I never wore outside the house, and a muted green hoodie that was unisex enough but looked too short somehow on him.

“Do any of my shoes fit you?” I asked as I opened my bag and dumped the professional-at-work clothes on the floor and rummaged for shorts, pants, and T-shirts from the pile on the floor.  What else? A raincoat? Pity I didn’t have two!

Vegeta awkwardly tried to shove his feet in my sneakers, and there was no way they were going to fit.  He might only have been around my height, but his feet were already bigger and much wider. He’d never worn shoes!  I tossed him a pair of sheepskin slippers that I used to keep my feet warm during the desert nights. They managed to accommodate him, just.

Another text came in on my wristband. 

_ Your car is outside. _

Barely keeping a scream inside I ran frantically around the house, snatching things that might be useful and shoving them in my pack - the hard copies of my birth certificate and doctorate, hiking boots, sleeping bag, a spare display, and my old wristband, which still worked but had no account linked to it.  A baseball cap.

I returned to Vegeta and pushed the cap onto his head, covering those distinctive spikes.  His hands flew up to it - he’d never owned a hat, either, I guessed. Oh, how easy it was to forget he was an electricity-spewing Saiyan now that he was out of the habitat.  I realized that he had already been holding his power in longer than he ever had before.

“We’re going to go on another long car ride, okay?” I told him.  “If you feel at any point that you can’t hold in your power, say so straight away, and we’ll pull the car over to let you out.”

“I can do it.”

“ _ Don’t _ push yourself.  I’m not sure I could survive a ‘leak’. Neither would the car, for that matter.”

We bundled into the waiting car.  I didn’t bother telling Vegeta to keep his head down now that it was dark, and he oggled the passing town with its night sights, such as they were - young women dressed in practically nothing despite the chill, men stumbling into and out of bars, and overlit restaurants with garish interiors.  Meanwhile I opened my display and used my anonymous email account to message Bardock.

_ I just busted a Saiyan off an aircraft carrier, and I’m on my way to the wilderness.  See you soon! _

Probably he wouldn’t get it, though I hoped he would.  I wanted a guide to get me there and safely through the gates.  Then I drew down a large chunk of the savings I’d built up while at Illuminary Inc into cash, and split it between my wristband and the old one.  The old one would work for practically nothing else but as a cash wallet, and was still under my name, even though it wasn’t linked to any account.

“Here,” I said, passing it to Vegeta.  “If we get seperated for any reason, you’ll have some money at least.”

He took it like he wasn’t sure what to do with it, but then put it on his wrist.  It was electric blue. At least it wasn’t pink.

“Are we going to get caught?” he asked. 

“No, I don’t think so.  But remember, I did tell you there was that risk.  Are you scared?”

He didn’t answer that question, but after a pause he said, “It’s okay.  I’d rather be free and on the run than safe and trapped.”

I relaxed a tiny bit, relieved he wasn’t regretting this.  I was reminded for a moment of Goku, the freest child I ever knew, and yet a fugitive.  He grinned in my memory. A sick feeling of guilt hit me in my stomach. 

_ Goku is not at Illuminary Inc, anyway, _ I reminded myself.

...

We pulled off the main highway and into a town in the foothills for some dinner.  Vegeta was starving and complaining of faintness. There was a general store, still open, with a hot food counter and a barista machine.  I got us hot sandwiches and slices of blueberry and apple pie and hot chocolate to go. While Vegeta had his first public restroom experience I hunted up and down the aisles for some underwear and socks for him, and then we were back on the road, going over the mountains before dropping back down into the outskirts of LA.

Shortly after that I got a call from Doctor Wright.

“Bulma, I’ve had the weirdest evening,” she said.  “There’s been military police here asking for you.”

“Ah huh.”  Then I realized that was way underplayed.  “What? Really? Why on Earth were they asking for me?”

“They said you may know something about an escaped Saiyan - which I know nothing about.  Escaped from where? Do you know?”

“No, I have no idea!”  

“Anyway, I told them you might still be on your way back from the Behemoth.  Are you at home now?”

Vegeta was watching me curiously.  “No. I got back to Barstow a couple of hours ago, but I headed straight out to my parents’ house.”

“Oh.  Could I give them the address?  They said it was very important to talk to you, even if you weren’t involved.”

“Oh.  Um. I’m afraid not.  My father has quite an important government job, and he doesn’t share his address except to closely vetted family and friends.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sure you understand.”

There were two beats of dead silence on the other end before she spoke again.  “Well… If that’s the case, see you tomorrow, Bulma.”

“See you.”

We hung up.  Kelly Wright knew who my father was.  The military police would be able to access his address.  I’d probably just sicced them on my dad.

It was ten at night when the car informed us that it had reached its authorized limit along the sleepy rural road.

“No residences or businesses lie beyond this point.  Would you like to pick another destination?”

I looked at Vegeta.  The poor boy was still wearing slippers.

“Are you up for a long walk?”

He nodded, even though he looked tired.  I began to wonder if it was in him to ever say no to anything.  Oh, well. Going elsewhere to book accomodation was going to take time, money and expose us to more risk.  If we got lost or didn’t make it, at least the night on this side of the mountains was mild. We wouldn’t get hypothermia sleeping in a field.

We set off, first down the road, and then off the end of it into the wilderness.

“Tell me more about Radishya,” Vegeta asked as we walked.  “And the family. Who are the family?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know more than I told you,” I told him.  “Maybe Bardock knows more. If not, I guess we will have to wait until we meet them.”

“When I meet Radishya, do you think it will be like having a mother?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe. But she must be very old now.”

Hiking across country in the dark is not nearly as fun as you’d hope it to be.  It was slow going, stumbling over bushes and burrows and the bits of old junk laying hidden in the grass.  We both fell many times, but especially Vegeta. He may have been used to walking and running on his treadmill, but walking on real terrain in the dark was new to him.  Each time I asked if he was okay he answered with a terse, “Yes.”

I was guiding us using my display and the GPS on my wristband.  When I wasn’t checking our position I pointed the display at the ground, casting a barely useful glow on it in the hope of revealing rocks and holes.  I had not thought to pack a flashlight. Some genius I was.

We stumbled on for three hours, getting slower and slower.  I was used to long hikes, and even I was exhausted. Despite Vegeta’s claims to the contrary, I sensed he wasn’t coping.  He was growing surlier and surlier with exhaustion.

We wandered without noticing into an area of undemolished ruins.  It took a while to notice that behind some of the bushes were walls.  I tripped over a curb. Soon the way ahead was blocked by old debris overgrown with vines and weeds.  We backtracked, following the ghost of a street and found another blockade covered with rampant overgrowth.  We couldn’t find our way through the maze of ruins in the dark.

“We’re stopping,” I announced.  

We hunted around, looking for some house that looked safe to enter, but they were all in a state of collapse.  Even the mostly upright ones smelled bad, like mold and animal dens. I took us back to the scrubland, picked a flatish, clearish spot in the open.  Not ideal, but… I laid out the sleeping bag, musing that if I’d known I was going to break a Saiyan out of custody I would have ordered a second sleeping bag.  Maybe we could use it like a blanket? I didn’t plan this very well. I didn’t plan this at all. I was already starting to think that maybe I’d made a big mistake.  But what else could I have done? Stand aside and watch another kid be devoured by the system? 

Then I realized that sleeping next to a Saiyan might also be a really big mistake.  He may have done well so far, but there was nothing to say he could control his power when he was asleep.

“You take the sleeping bag,” I told him.  “I’m going to keep a lookout.”

“Aren’t you tired?”

I was exhausted.  “A little bit.”

“I could keep watch.”

“No, you go to sleep.  I’ll be sitting under this tree over there.”

Surprisingly, even with twigs sticking into my hair and a hard trunk against my back, I fell into a doze, though Vegeta moving about in the sleeping bag woke me up several times.  The last time I woke to the sound of his voice right in front of me.

“Doctor Bulma, are you awake?”

I started to full consciousness with a gulp of air.  “I am now!”

“Can I sleep under there with you?”

He was crouching under the spread of the large bush I was under, holding the sleeping bag.

“I was kind of under here because I didn’t want to get electrocuted.  Surely you’re more comfortable out there?”

“Oh.  No, not really.”

“How come?”

“...It’s the sky.”

“What about it?”  I crawled out to look, feeling how my limbs had seized with stiffness.  The sky was clear and full of stars.

“It’s too big.”

He took the spot under the bush, and I tried to sleep in the open with my head on my backpack.  He was kind of right - even I, who was used to seeing the whole sky, not just some small slice through bars, felt totally exposed under its lofy dome.  Exposed and out of my depth. What had I done? I’d just detonated my life and put myself in charge of a helpless fourteen year old, and I had no idea what came next.

...

“What the...?”

I opened my eyes to the pre-dawn sky and a black man standing over me.  He held a gun, not pointed at me, but at the ready.

“My name is Bulma and I’m a friend of Bardock’s!” I shouted, brain going from nought to sixty in a split second, turbo-charged on adrenaline.

“Bardock?” said the man.  I wondered if he even knew who I was talking about.  There was a flurry of movement from the bush. We both turned to see Vegeta burst out, yelling, “Get away from her!”

The man  _ did  _ raise his weapon then.  Thick trails of lightning were crackling from Vegeta to the ground, filling the air with the smell of ozone, and setting the grass on fire.  I launched myself at the man’s weapon, shoving it aside as he fired, the rounds deafening and the gunmetal searing my hands.

“Don’t hurt him!  He’s just a kid!”

The man pushed me off with a foot to the abdomen, but I was on my feet again in an instant.  “Vegeta, stop!” I shouted. He did, looking at me, and the man backed up, trying to keep eyes on both me and Vegeta.  He was a Wilder. Who else would be wandering this area, armed and dressed in clothes that had faded to various shades of dirt?

“Don’t shoot us,” I told him.  “We’re friends!”

“Yeah, he looks  _ real  _ friendly,” said the guy, apparently settling on Vegeta as the primary target.

“Bulma!” said Vegeta, eyes unable to look away from the barrel of the gun.  

“He’s just a kid!” I tried to explain.  “A young, Saiyan kid, and you gave him a scare.”

“I can see he’s a Saiyan just fine,” replied the man.  “Stop that lightning shit!”

Vegeta gave me a panicked glance. 

“Power down,” I told him.  “It’s okay.” I hoped it was.

The lightning dissipated and the man lowered his gun and ran to one of the grass fires that had burst to life and started stamping on it, shouting, “Hey, you started the fire, the least you can do is help put it out!”

...

The wilder’s name was George, and after some proper introductions and some grumbling about his bad luck to actually find something on patrol, he walked us back to the barricade of the South East Los Angeles Free America.

“You really call yourselves that?” I asked stupidly, taking in the mass of tumbled debris and dirt that made up the defenses.  Along the top edge was a palisade made of whatever could be made sharp and difficult to climb - railings, rebar, sheet metal. It was impressive, yet obviously would pose no threat to a modern military.

“That’s what I said,” replied George, with little humour.  “We  _ are  _ one of the last remaining free territories of the United States of America.”

“Oh.  Yeah.”  I tried to get my head around that.  To me, they had always been presented as a primitive, lawless state that had used the war to break away from the rest of the United States as it became the Super States of America.  To them...it seemed that they saw the SSA as the break-away.

“Is there any point in the barricade?” I asked as we approached the mouth of a tunnel built into the thing.  “I would have thought it would be useless against a tank or an air strike.”

“Thank you, Miss Obvious.  We are full aware that our defenses are no match for the SSA military.  But it’s good enough to keep curious or  _ do-gooder  _ civilians out.”

“Ah.”

We descended into the mouth of the tunnel, and encountered a steel gate only a few yards inside.

“George Whitman?” a voice said over a speaker.

“Yeah?”

“Who’ve you got with you?”

I looked around.  Was there a camera?

“A couple of kids that say they’re friends of that Carbon, Bardock.  Apparently he told them it was fine to show up uninvited.”

“We’ll send for Bardock to vouch for them.  Did you check them for weapons already?”

“Yes.”

“May as well let you in while we wait, then.”  

“One of them’s a Saiyan.”

“Is he a threat?”

George gave Vegeta an unimpressed look and sighed..  “I  _ guess  _ not.”

A buzzer sounded, and a small door in the gate popped open slightly.  George opened it and lead us through. On the other side a few people stood up from the ancient sofas and armchairs they’d been resting in, holding guns casually at their sides.  One woman had a labrador-cross on a leash.

A woman stepped before us, gesturing to a sideboard and doorway to nowhere.  “Place your gear in the trays, please.” Suddenly I recognized the sideboard for what it really was - an old fashioned x-ray machine like they used to have at airports, and the doorway was a metal detector.  We had to take off our wristbands and go through the door one by one while all our gear was scanned in the machine. The dog was not just for petting either. Vegeta was exuding anxiety at being contained and corralled like this, but when the dog came sniffing at him, he fell back against the x-ray machine in fright.

“It’s fine,” I said, rushing back his his side, then realizing that this was a dumb thing to do if he started throwing out electrical bolts again.

“The dog’s gotta smell him for explosives or we won’t let him in,” the handler said grimly.

“I get that.”  I took Vegeta’s hand and looked him in the eye.  He was flustered and somewhat shame-faced. He did not like showing fear.

“I’ve never seen a real dog before,” he explained.

“I know.”

I stood with him while the dog gave us both a good going over, sticking its nose in our crotches and resting its paws on our chests to get closer to our heads before it returned to its mistress.

“That’s a pass by Jem,” she announced.  “I guess we let them through?”

The first woman opened a second set of metal gates, and we were led the rest of the way through the tunnel towards the light.  At the top we came out into a small square surrounded by...a suburb. I frowned. It looked like the outskirts of Chicago where the hopefuls and service workers lived, only less green and much sunnier.  There was a mixture of single story and low-rise buildings, all old, all needing new paint, and some with very ad hoc repairs and extensions, but it was astonishingly unremarkable. A woman left a house close by, pushing a baby in a stroller.

A baby in a stroller!

Someone came running from one of the streets that fed into the square - tall and muscular, his spikes of hair bouncing wildly as he turned and saw us emerging from the tunnel.

“Goku!” he yelled, and I flushed with shame and pain.  Of course Bardock was going to assume that the young Saiyan I’d brought back with me was Goku, but as he ran full tilt toward us I saw the expression on his face falter.

“Goku?” he repeated, grabbing Vegeta by the shoulders.  Vegeta didn’t like this and tried to pull away.

“No!” he said.

Bardock stared, then shoved Vegeta away from himself.

“Bardock-”  I stared, but he rounded on me.

“Where’s Goku?  Why did you bring me some random Vegeta?”

“I had to save him!  We’ve just come all the way from Victorville!”

Bardock paced away from us and back again, running his hands through his hair, walking off his disappointment.

“Well, I suppose one more is a good thing.  How did you manage to get him away from Illuminary Inc without them noticing?”

“I didn’t get him from Victorville,” I explained, dreading what I knew was coming.

“I was on a ship,” said Vegeta.  “An aircraft carrier.”

Bardock looked between the two of us, stunned.  “An aircraft carrier? Aren’t they going to notice he’s gone fairly quickly?”

“Yes,” I admitted, then I sucked in my lip to stop it from wobbling.  This was enough for Bardock to guess what was up.

“They  _ know  _ you took him?”

“They strongly suspect.  They sent military police after me to question me.”

“Bulma!”  Then he roared wordlessly, doubling over.  By now a small crowd had gathered around us - a few from the tunnel and a few others who had followed Bardock.  “You’ve blown it! You’ve wasted the chance to get Goku and Gine back for some...Vegeta!”

“Goku wasn’t at Illuminary Inc anyway!” I protested.

“You didn’t know that for sure!  And how are you supposed to get into the WRU now, huh?  Fuck!” He staggered away towards a low wall outside someone’s house.

“We’ll figure something out!” I called after him, already crying in sympathy and regret.

The people around us pressed in, though one went to follow Bardock.

“Leave him!” an old man said.  “He needs some time to cool off.”

“Tell us what’s happened?” another man asked.  He was short, very round and very dark skinned. 

“Was I not supposed to come?” Vegeta asked me.  “Who is Goku?”

“I was at Illuminary Inc to save my friend Goku, remember?” I told him.  “But I saved you instead.”

Vegeta looked so distraught that I added, “I made the choice, so you  _ are  _ supposed to be here!”

...

We were led down some streets, past a massive, irrigated communal garden, to “The White House”.  It was literally a white house; a large and squat, traditional adobe house, washed white. It looked in better condition than the houses in the square, but still very humble.  The two men showed us to a sitting room that had walls of naked mud brick and a packed, polished dirt floor. We sat on a motley assortment of chairs that looked like they’d been screwed together from the naturally bent and twisted branches of shrubs, stripped, smoothed and polished.

“Would you like a drink?” asked the old man.  He had skin the color or of nubuck, and was very wrinkled.  His forehead was so deeply wrinkled that it almost looked alien, but I tried not to stare.  Vegeta had never received the lectures on good etiquette that I had, though, and stared enough for the both of us.

“Yes, please,” I said.

“Do you have food?” Vegeta asked bluntly.  “We haven’t had breakfast.”

“We do indeed,” he replied, but his shorter, rounder, tighter skinned friend got up.

“I’ll see to it, President Kami.  Do not bother yourself.”

“You’re the president of this place?” I asked, suddenly seeing the name of the house as a ridiculous homage to the old seat of the United States presidency.

Kami waved his hand in dismissal.  “Ex-president. Popo insists on using the honorific in front of guests.  I don’t think he ever got over the fact that I retired. President Yamma is out in the fields today, overseeing some business with the settlement out there.”

There was a frightening crackle of static noise from the direction Popo had taken, followed by an awful noise that I only just worked out was a distorted human voice before I heard Popo reply.

“We have them here at the White House.  Send Bardock over, if he’s up to it.”

“What was that?” I asked Kami.

“Shortwave radio,” Kami explained.  “We don’t have any of your ‘wrist bands’ here.  Now, you are Bulma, obviously. Bardock has told us about you and what the two of you were trying to achieve.  I gather this has gone somewhat awry.”

“Yes.”  I felt terrible.  I had purposely screwed the mission.  

Popo came back with glasses of fresh orange juice and a plate of potato bread spread with honey and peanut butter.  I took a slice gratefully, and had to eat it quickly in order to get a second one, as Vegeta was eating with a speed I hadn’t seen equalled by even Goku.  While we were stuffing our faces, another man entered the room, followed by Bardock, hanging his head.

“Hey, Kami,” said the new man.  He was also short, used a cane, and almost his entire face besides his pinked nose was covered in white whiskers.

“Korin, Bardock, take a seat,” Kami instructed.  Popo had glasses of juice in their hands within seconds, though Bardock just stared sightlessly at his.

“Why did you take this boy off an aircraft carrier?” he asked, without looking at me.  “You must’ve known it would have sent them after you.”

“I did know,” I admitted.  “But I was inside Illuminary Inc for months, and there was no sign that Goku had been through the system.  I got access to all the records for the Saiyans returning for quarantine - there was nothing in them about a half-Saiyan hybrid.”

“That assumes they gave you the full record!”

“They wouldn’t have known his record from me!  Even if he had been there,” I objected, “he’d have been long gone!  They only hold the kids there for a couple of months tops!  _ He was not there _ .”

“You can’t know that!” He sat forward in his seat again, and Korin put a hand on his arm, as if to remind him not to leap at me.  Bardock bridled at it, but remained seated, his black eyed gaze hot with frustration. Beside me I sensed Vegeta shrinking back into his seat, probably wishing he wasn’t there.

“I wasn’t getting any closer to it!  If he’s anywhere, he’s at Weapon’s Research!”  A wave of nausea washed over me then, and I thought I might actually regurgitate my bread.  If he was  _ anywhere _ ...

“Then you needed to get into Weapons Research!”

“I know., but…”  I gripped the arm of the chair, fighting through the sudden faintness.  “How was I to get into Weapon’s Research? You said yourself, it could take years of laying down the trust, of doing exactly what they wanted, impressing them, pretending to be someone I wasn’t.  We don’t even know when or even if they might need a  _ developmental  _ psychologist!  Was I supposed to get to know wave after wave of Saiyan children, knowing what becomes of them once the company is done with them?”

“ _ I _ would have!”  He glared at me, and for a second I believed he despised me.

“Easy for you to say, when you’re not faced with it!  Are you really that hard-hearted? I couldn’t stomach it any longer!  I had to do something to help them!”

Bardock withdrew for a moment, sitting back in his seat.

“So you saved  _ one  _ child?”  He gestured at Vegeta, who responded by glaring back.  “What makes this one special? What makes this  _ Vegeta  _ worth saving?”

Vegeta growled.

“Bardock!” Kami admonished the older Saiyan.  I quickly turned to Vegeta, afraid I was going to see sparks flying, and I did.  A thin crackle of lightning arced from Vegeta to the metal leg of the coffee table that separated him from Bardock.

“Vegeta, please calm down,” I said, jumping from my seat, feeling my hair lifting with electrical charge.  The other men except for Bardock followed suit, but there were no more sparks.

“Sorry,” said Vegeta, snapping himself out of it.  “I didn’t mean to let it go. It’s okay, now.”

“This boy’s not even  _ trained _ ,” said Bardock.

“Bardock, have a little more compassion for someone in the same position as you were in, once,” said Kami.

“He’s about as special as you were at the same age,” I said bluntly.  “I chose to save him because I  _ could _ .” 

Bardock dropped his eyes, abashed.

We took our seats again.

“So, what is to be done?” said Kami.  “Are you planning on staying here?”

“I thought we were going to find my mother?” said Vegeta.  “I mean, Radishya.”

Bardock gave a small grunt of ambiguous meaning.

“That is what I was hoping,” I explained, ignoring him.

“We’ve got a check-in scheduled with the family in a few days,” Korin said.  “We can talk to them about a meet up then. I don’t know who they’ll send, though - last I heard, Junior’s wife had just given birth to their third, so…”

“Well, sounds like you’ll be staying here in the short term.  No hurry, as long as you followed the usual procedure for getting here.”

I had a sinking feeling.  “Sorry, but what’s the usual procedure?”

Kami’s smile fell like a rock.  “Bardock, did you not tell her?”

“I didn’t know she was about to come tearing across country with an escaped Saiyan!” said Bardock.  And then he put his head in his hands. “Fuck, I’m sorry Kami, I should have told her anyway! Fuuuck!”

Now the faces looking at me were alarmed.  “How did you get here, dear?” asked Popo.

“We caught a car over the hills to the end of the road closest to-”

The three Wilders sucked in a collective breath of dismay.

“Is that bad?” I asked, when I could already tell it was very bad.

“Did you pay for it with that wristband?” Korin asked.

“Yes.”

“And is it linked to your own account?”

“Yes.”

The four men looked amongst themselves, expressions conveying anxiety.

“Do you have a GPS device on you?” Bardock asked.

“Yes,” I admitted in a tiny voice.  “On my wristband. Should I turn it off?”

“The chickens may have flown the coup already, but yes,” said Kami.  

“Have you answered any calls from unknown numbers on your wristband?” Korin asked.

“No.”

“Well, thank god for that.  They can activate a beacon function on wristbands remotely just by making a call.”

I felt a prickling of horror.  “I hadn’t heard that!”

“Well, that government of yours isn’t going to advertise the fact that they can turn any wristband into a locator device.”

Kami sighed.  “It looks like you can’t stay here for any length of time, anyway,” he said.  “If the military is serious about finding you, they already know where you are, just through your spending and GPS.”

I felt myself turning white again. I walked my wristband through the voice commands to turn the GPS off, then I reviewed my last day of wristband activity.  I hadn’t answered any calls besides the one from Dr Wright.

“What does that mean?” asked Vegeta while I fussed over my band.  “We have to keep going? Will we not be able to meet Radishya?”

“You can’t stay, I’m sorry,” said Kami.  “But we should still be able to reach Radishya.  We can arrange a meet up and let them know when and where to find you. When they call in in a few days.”

“How will we get there?” I asked.  If I couldn’t use my wristband, I was lost.  I had no idea how to get anywhere.

“Let us figure out the ‘where’ first,” said the hairy one, Korin.  He was one of the oddest people I had ever seen. His eyes suggested Asian ancestry, and almost closed entirely when he smiled, but that pink skin and profusion of white hair - I doubted this guy would have passed the genetic screening at birth if he’d been born in the SSA.  “Shall I go get the maps, Kami?”

“Yes.  And the printouts of the train timetables, too.  Popo, could you be a dear and let President Yamma know what’s happened here?”

The three wilders poured over pieces of paper making plans for us, while Bardock sat alone and contemplative in the corner.  Vegeta and I waited, unable to contribute, yet entirely vested in the outcome of the discussion. When Vegeta looked at me I could see the worry in his eyes.  Dread was settling in. Could I do this, whatever  _ this  _ was?

“Would you like to sleep some more?” Popo asked us, getting up.  His chief contribution to the plans seemed to be the consideration of our physical limits and food.  “There are spare beds here. Or something more to eat?”

“Something more to eat, please,” said Vegeta without missing a beat.  I nodded. I knew I needed both more food and more sleep, but I could probably manage to force myself to eat, whereas I couldn’t leave these guys to determine my fate alone.

“It’s decided then,” Kami announced sitting up and turning to us.  “You will catch the freight train from LA to Chicago. From there, you will have to make your own way from the city up the West side of the lake to Kenosha, where a friend of ours will take you up Lake Michigan and down into Lake Huron, for which we will owe him greatly, and across land to Toronto.  Then by bus into Quebec, and we’ll have Radishya or her family meet you at Lac Brûlé, which is near where they live.”

I was dumbfounded.  “How long will all that take?”

Korin consulted his notes.  “About six days, maybe seven.  But we’ll get Radishya to stick around an extra day in case you get held up.”

“How do I pay for all this stuff if I can’t use my wristband?”

“Ah...we’ve got a stash of wristbands registered under ghost names.”

“What’s a ghost name?”

Korin bobbed his head from side to side.  “Well, names belonging to people who won’t be using them anymore.”

“Dead people,” Bardock clarified, speaking for the first time in an hour.

“Don’t look so shocked!” Korin protested.  “We didn't kill them or anything. Mostly just got them from estate sales.  Of course, they’re cash only. I hope you’ve got some cash at least to put on them.”

“I do.”  I looked at the band on Vegeta’s wrist.  “I’ve got my own old band, too. It’s just cash only - can we use that?”

“Perhaps.  It’s much harder to track than a registered band, because when you buy something with it, there’s no instant exchange of data about the transactional parties, only the cash deducted and the band number, and not all companies store the band number.  It’s not impossible though. I’d advise against it, to be safe.”

“What about as a backup?”

“As a backup?  It should be fine, as long as you only keep it for emergencies.”

“Okay.  And how do you catch a freight train?”

“Not through any legal means,” said Bardock.

“Correct,” said Korin.  “But we free people have made it an art over the years to catch the automated freight trains.  We know the tricks - we’ll give you instructions.”

“Okay.”

“You can’t send them alone,” said Bardock, standing up to join the others at the coffee table strewn with paper maps.  “They’re only kids. They’re freaking out.”

“I’m not a kid,” I disputed, though I didn’t deny the freaking out charge.

“Neither am I,” said Vegeta, standing a little taller.

“You’ve been out of your cell all of one day,” said Bardock.  “Trust me when I say you are not ready to take this journey alone.”

“Me and Bulma will have each other.  We don’t need anyone else.”

Somehow Vegeta’s faith in me made me feel all the more like a pretender.

“We’ll go alone if we have to,” I said.  “A guide would be nice, but you’re already putting yourselves out such a lot for us, so I wouldn’t expect it.”

“I’ll take you,” said Bardock.

“What, really?”

He shrugged, avoiding my gaze.  “Yeah.”

“Have you been up there before?”

“Part of the way.  Not as far as Chicago, but I’ve been on one of those freight trains once.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” said Kami.  “You at least know what to expect of the trains, and I’m not sure how much good waiting around here will do you anyway.  Radishya is impatient to finally meet you.”

Bardock cringed slightly.  “I suppose it’s long overdue.  And I’ve been a burden on you for too long.”

“Not a burden, no,” replied Kami, serenely.  “You’re free to come back here anytime you like.  Make you life here. No more ‘Just for now’ or ‘While I’m waiting’.”

The two shared a long, level look and then Bardock nodded his head.  “You’re too kind, Kami.”

Kami, who was equally as tall as Bardock, despite his age, reached his arms out to embrace him, patting him on his back.

“Thank you for all you’ve given and taught me,” said Bardock, his voice sounding oddly strangled.  “You’ve been my greatest mentor. I’ll never forget you.”

“My boy, I doubt this is farewell, only goodbye for now.  And it’s time for you to be the mentor. I’m sure you have much to teach this youngster.”

The youngster did not look pleased to be addressed so.  “So, what now?” Vegeta asked.

Kami let Bardock go.  “Let Korin, Popo and I work out the finer details and draw up instructions, and I suppose we’d better inform the President of what we’re doing, as we’ll be dipping into communal resources to help you.  You young people should nap while you can before setting out.

...

Popo showed Vegeta and me to a small room with twin beds.  I have no idea what the mattresses were made of, but they were hard and lumpy.  I only just had drifted off to sleep when he came to wake us again.

“I’ve just made you some dinner.  It’s a bit of an early dinner for Kami and me, but we’ll join you anyway, as we want to see you off well.”

I wondered if Popo was Kami’s servant or husband, but it seemed rude to ask.

Bardock was there too, looking in better spirits as we ate a chickpea and lamb stew.  Vegeta and he scraped the large pot bare, and I wondered how far my cash was going to go to feed these two if we didn’t get to Lac Brûlé soon.

After dinner, Popo brought a rickshaw around from behind the house to convey us to the far side of the Wilderness area.  In this bizarre manner we had the briefest of tours of the compound. It seemed as if, besides the small area of township around the main gate, the entire area of the Wilderness area had been cleared for agriculture.  Possibly this was how the massive barricades were created. We passed two ancient, idle bulldozers, cotton fields, potato fields, orchards, and animal pens. We also passed people, on foot or bike, or zooming past in the opposite direction on rickshaws.  Every so often there was a cluster of adobe houses, or a barn made of reclaimed sheet iron.

The fields were irrigated, and there was a stunning abundance of green compared to the wasteland outside the barricade.

“Where do they get the water from?” I asked Popo.

“The same place the rebuilt city gets it - piped out from the Colorado River.”

“Really?  They only started that up again about twenty years ago, didn’t they?”

“Yes.  We’ve been connected to the pipeline from Lake Matthews all along, but until they started refilling it from the Colorado River again, we were reliant on rain to fill the lake, so we had less volume.  It’s been a bit of a boomtime for us.” He grinned, his teeth amazingly white in contrast to his skin. “Of course, they tried to block off the branch pipes like ours when they officially reopened the pipeline, but we managed to reopen it without them noticing.  We have our own pump station here.”

Vegeta’s eyes were in danger of falling out of his head, so intently was he taking all this in.  When Popo stopped the rickshaw to let another pass in the dirt lane, Vegeta stood up in the seat, reached into a tree and plucked an orange.  He sat down, face glowing with wonder, laughing.

“I knew food grew on trees, but it’s another thing to see it!”

Our destination was a small, barred gate in the barricade, which Popo unlocked for us.  He lit a lamp and led us inside, single file.

It was cool in the tunnel.  It angled downwards for quite a long way, braced with wood and lined with old sheet metal.  Then it flattened out and ran on an improbably long way through the dark, our footsteps sounding oddly dead on the dirt of the floor.  The light from the lamp hardly made it to Vegeta and me at the end of the line. Vegeta kept bumping into me. I was quite spooked by the cramped tunnel and worried about the weight of the barricade above us.  Vegeta however, was eating his orange.

“This is surely further than the width of the barricade,” I said at last.

“It is,” agreed Popo.  “It comes up a mile East of the barricade.”

We emerged into the afternoon sun in the wasteland.

“You know exactly where you’re headed?” Popo asked Bardock.

“Yes.”

“Godspeed, then.”

We set off across the plain.  Bardock had a backpack and carried a small plastic bucket in his hand.  Vegeta had also been gifted a backpack that had seen better days, and some proper shoes, though they looked like they should have been retired long ago.

“What’s the bucket for?” I asked Bardock.

“Oh, you’ll see,” he replied ominously.  

I asked him no more.  The harmony between Bardock and I was broken, and I wondered why he had even volunteered to come with us.  Vegeta was wary of him, too. As we walked, I could sense Vegeta’s curiosity in the way he paused to look at this or that.  He worked his way up to asking questions about the plants or wildlife, but addressed these always to me, not Bardock.

The wasteland gave way to fields and vineyards as sunset approached.  Houses dotted the landscape, but we kept well back from any road. Bardock led us unerringly North East, past a group of packhouses, and then the rust and gravel mess of a railway station.  I knew this was the terminus for the freight rail system to and from Los Angeles, though I’d never been here before. The passenger line swung South around the Wilderness area and into Westwood, but the freight was primarily coming from here - fruit, grains, and wine to be taken North and East.  Metal box cars and sleek containers lined the tracks in an incomprehensible sprawl, with robotic loaders slowly moving amongst them.

We shadowed the rail line for another couple of miles.

“Why don’t we just get on at the station?” I asked, already suspecting the answer.

“Too much security around the station,” Bardock replied.  “The fences are too well maintained, and finding the right train is next to impossible, too.”

We kept going, into the dusk, until we approached a low hill with the railway cut into it in a deep V.  Bardock led us up the hill and then to the fenceline, searching around the base of it until he found what he was looking for - a dug out hollow hidden in the long grass, deep enough for a person to slip underneath.  Under we went, and out to the edge of the raw rockface. Bardock plucked a crowbar from his backpack and used it to lever jagged pieces of rock from the slope. They crashed and tumbled down to the tracks, some of it spilling out over the rails.  He kept at it, levering larger bits out, until the tracks were made impassable by the scattering of rocks on the rails.

“Come on,” he said.  “We need to go lie in wait, now.”

We followed the cliff edge back down the hill until it joined the rail line again, and Bardock selected us a bush to lie under, with a good view in either direction.

“Hey, how you holding up?” Bardock asked Vegeta.  It was the first time he had actually spoken to the boy.

Vegeta eyed him suspiciously.  “Fine.”

I rolled my eyes. I could’ve told him it was pointless to ask Vegeta such a question.  I knew his feet were still sore from last night’s walk, and today would have made it worse.  

Bardock looked a little nonplussed, but then he turned back to watching the tracks.

“Let me know if you have any questions, okay?”

It was a long twenty minutes before an odd looking vehicle came zooming along the tracks.  We could hear the low rumble of a train, but it wasn’t coming from this thing, which was only the size of a road car.  It slowed to a stop at the entrance to the cutting. Then a whirring noise began, and it started inching forward, small rocks flying away from it either side.

“What is that?” Vegeta asked.

“The pilot vehicle,” Bardock explained.  “It checks the tracks and clears minor problems like this before the freight train arrives, and gives the train the chance to slow down before hazards.”

I could hear high pitched squealing now in the distance but getting closer.  The head of the train came into view, rumbling, getting slower and slower as it approached the cutting.  The pilot vehicle was now deploying a robotic arm to lift a larger rock free of the tracks. Bardock looked back and forth between the two.

“When I say go, run for the nearest gap between cars, and get up a ladder.  It doesn’t matter which one, as long as we’re on board before it starts rolling again.  Assuming it stops rolling.”

The head of the train passed us at agonizingly slow speed.

“Won’t the driver spot us?” Vegeta whispered.

“No  driver,” Bardock replied.  “It’s all AI. The sensors up front are looking for hazards only.”

The train began rolling into the cutting, obscuring our view of the pilot vehicle.

“Go!” Bardock ordered.

We ran, heading for the nearest gap, still slightly moving, and immediately discovered that the distance between the rails and the carriage links was a lot bigger than it had looked from afar.  Vegeta made it to the start of the ladder with a great heave, but I struggled, one foot on the link and the other hopping on the ground as the train moved. Bardock grabbed my leg and pushed me up, then followed, his long limbs making easy work of it.  

We reconvened, sitting atop a refrigerated container.

“Do we ride on the top the whole way?” Vegeta asked.

“No,” said Bardock.  “We need to find a good container to hide in before we pass through populated areas again.  We’ve got about an hour to find a car that has room for us, isn’t locked, and isn’t airtight.”

...

_ “Ah, all the secrets of the South East Wilderness are coming out now,” Zarbon says.  “Not that it matters any longer, but for purposes of historical record and curiosity.  Note that down, Lieutenant Cui.” _

_ Not that it matters.  Not that it matters. It doesn’t matter what my big mouth has said. _

_ “Continue,” said Zarbon.  “I assume you made it to Chicago that way?  I know you made it to Lac Brûlé. Fill in the blanks for me.” _

...

The two days spent on the freight train were awful in the extreme.  The best car we could find - a very lucky find, according to Bardock - was a livestock car.  It had two levels - the bottom full of sheep bah-ing their heads off, and the top empty, but strewn with dried droppings and reeking of the fresh dung and sheep piss coming up from below.  A narrow strip of of open space at a sheep’s head height let in air and light.

“Oh, my god!” I’d exclaimed at the smell.  And the idea of sleeping on that floor.

“Hey, it’s ventilated!” Bardock pointed out.  “And we’ve even got a view!”

I soon found out what the bucket was for.  Unlike the livestock downstairs, we had the convenience, if you could call it that, of somewhere to defecate, and in my case, urinate.  To my horror, both Bardock and Vegeta thought it a great laugh to stick their wangs out of the window and piss into the wind.

We ate the food that had been wrapped in rags and carried in Vegeta’s backpack, and I prayed that the previous occupants of this car had no communicable diseases. We had plenty of water though.  We’d been given a meager two drink bottles of water each for a forty hour train trip, but there was a water trough set in the wall, and the trickle feeding it could be diverted into our bottles.

That first night we all slept poorly, kept awake by outbursts of nervous sheep-talk and cloven hooves stamping on boards.  I slept on the far side of the car from the other two, as Bardock agreed it was not safe for me to be near Vegeta when he slept.  I finally fell into a deep sleep after the sun came up, and slept into mid morning, oblivious to all discomfort.

When I did wake up I shifted my back, made sore by the boards, but lay still wondering if I could fall back asleep again.

“You don’t want me to teach you how I was taught,” Bardock was saying.

“What way was that?” Vegeta asked.

“They would put a bracelet around my arm or ankle, or even neck - they’d movie it around so the same spot didn’t get damaged constantly.  It was locked in place, nice and snug. If I let my power loose, spikes would come out of the inside of the bracelet and press into me. The higher the power, the further they’d stick in.”

There was a pause.  “Did it work?”

“Yeah, it did.”

“Maybe we could improvise something like that.  You could punch me everytime I lose control.”

I was about to say something to object to this, but Bardock snorted.  “Sorry, kid, I don’t really feel that sadistic today.” Vegeta was stoic to the point of absurdity.

“You would have punched me yesterday,” he pointed out bitterly.

“No, I wouldn’t have,” said Bardock.  “And sorry for how I was yesterday. I was upset because I was expecting someone else.”

“You mean Goku?  Your son?”

“Yes.”

“You were mean to Bulma, too.”

Bardock didn’t respond to that straight away, while I struggled to hear.  “Well, she didn’t make the decision I would have made. But she was the one that had to make it.”

“Well, I’m kinda rather glad she decided to break me out instead of keeping her cover.”

“Yes.  I’m sure.  We all deserve that.  And Bulma is a good person - of course she wants it for us all.  Anyway, back to power control - I think just practicing will get you there eventually.  Just keep correcting it every time you feel it getting loose. Always be conscious that strong emotions, especially fear or anger, boost your power output.”

“I have to be calm all the time?”

“No.  But you have to hold the power in check when you’re freaking out, or else you’re likely to hurt the people closest to you.”

“I managed not to hurt Bulma.”

“I know.  That was pretty good, but you still almost lost it in Kami’s house yesterday.  Bulma was lucky. If we have a chance later, I’ll also have a go at teaching you how to project it instead.  Hit targets, that kind of thing. Yes?”

“Yeah.”

When I decided to be officially awake, I found the atmosphere between us had thawed a little. Without anything else to do, we talked.  I gave a fuller account of my last week at Illuminary Inc and what had happened on the aircraft carrier, leaving out all the kissing and groping, of course.  It turned out that Vegeta had gone through the nursery with Turles, Brocca, and Kale from the study group. He was upset at the thought of what had happened to them.  

“Hey, as long as they made the right choices, they’ll be out there still,” Bardock told Vegeta.  “Turleses are tough. And Kales and Broccas can seem sweet, but they can suck it up when they need to.” 

“Maybe I should have just gone along with it,” said Vegeta.  “Then I’d be with them, at least.”

“True,” replied Bardock.  “But they’ll never get to be free like you will.”

I was pleased that Bardock and Vegeta seemed to have broken the ice a little, and that Bardock, though he might not have forgiven me, at least could see where I was coming from.  I didn’t  _ like  _ that I might have screwed up the chance to find Goku and Gine for Vegeta.  But I also didn’t know that I had.

“I have an idea about how to get to Gine and Goku,” I told him after our cold dinner.

“How?” he asked, focusing on me with that slightly scary intensity.

“It will be a long game.  But the only way the raising and militarizing of Saiyan children can go on is because people don’t know about it.  If it was exposed…”

“If it was exposed, then what?” he asked.

“Then there would be an uproar!  People would start asking questions, and Illuminary Inc would have to show that they really were living up to their publicity, or else vow to change.  Maybe the military would be forced to release all the Saiyan soldiers?”

“Or they execute them to hide the evidence.”

“They wouldn’t do that!  Would they?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe. Or maybe they’d just find a better way to hide it.  To move the operation.”

“Well, I could at least threaten to tell the tale if they don’t give us Goku and Gine.”

“That sounds like a very dangerous game,” he told me, and now that I had said it out loud, I realized it sounded hopelessly naive.  

“Perhaps.  But I do think that ultimately, the only way to end the abuse of Saiyan children is to educate the public on it.  My sister is a very successful journalist. She’ll know how to go about it.”

...

We fled the train as it slowed to an almost standstill in the rail interchange system of Chicago on the third day of our journey.  After a hair-raising dash between moving trains coming from multiple directions, we made it out of the massive yard into the rough and semi-industrial neighborhoods North of it.  Then I used my money, loaded on the borrowed “ghost name” wristband to order a car. My other wristband was still in my pocket. I had felt it buzz at numerous points and snuck it out to look.  There were multiple missed calls from Dr Wright, my parents, and other numbers I didn’t recognize. What I had done started to loom larger in my mind.

We were all starving, so our first port of call was a burger joint, the next was an outdoor clothing store to buy some decent boots and a heavy jacket for Vegeta, who was shivering uncontrollably in the late fall chill of Chicago, and gloves, hats, and extra layers for all of us.  I had not been expecting to be facing this sort of weather when I’d been stuffing a bag in Victorville. After that we hit a supermarket for more supplies, and lastly a liquor store to buy the specified crate of whiskey for Ned Hampton, who would take us up the lake. 

Vegeta fell asleep in the car on the way up to Ned’s, and had to be woken up when the car stopped.  Ned’s property was large, overgrown, lakefront, and dotted with boats and vehicles in various stages of rot and ruin.  The weatherbeaten house was small, and when we got inside, redolent of the smell of old cooking oil and wet laundry. However, Ned thought we smelt worse.

“Yea gods!  Shower yourselves, all of you!”

He was an eccentric old man, a retired boat mechanic, part time boat builder and full-time subversive.  Smuggling unauthorized goods or people across the border between Canada and the home states was his speciality.  We slept the night in one of his sheds, in bunks set up for visitors such as we, and in the morning he offered us bacon, eggs, and toast for breakfast (though then grumbled that he wouldn’t have if he’d known that Bardock and Vegeta were Saiyans).  Finally, we set out onto the freezing water of Lake Michigan on a large, handbuilt wooden boat.

The trip up the lake was beautiful.  Even though it was freezing, Vegeta spent nearly all the time on deck looking out at the distant Western shore, watching the birds and other lake traffic, his nose and cheeks growing red with the chill.  Bardock was more content to either be inside playing solitaire or else talking to Ned about his adventures in the wheelhouse, which was too small to seat more than two. I couldn’t help but feel snubbed by that.

I joined Vegeta on the deck to give him a filthy mug of hot tea.  He was sitting on the wooden locker near the stern, chin resting on his forearms atop the rail, eyes shut.

“Vegeta?”

He stirred awake.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.  Of course,” he replied.

“Are you sleeping okay?”

“Yes.”  I knew he was sleeping just fine - sleeping like the proverbial log, and having to be woken by Bardock or me each morning.  He was sleeping a  _ lot _ .

“Is that hot chocolate?”

“No.  It’s tea.  Do you want it?”

“Yeah, okay.  Are you going to drink yours out here, too?”

“Of course!” I took a seat next to him, smiling at the oblique invitation.  He smiled too, though he did it discreetly, looking fixedly out over the water.

“So, what do  you make of it all?  The wide, wide world?” I asked him.

“Well.  It sure is  _ wide _ .  It makes me feel weird, like there’s nothing holding me together.”

“Is that bad?”

“No.  Just weird.  But there’s so much to look at!  So many  _ different  _ things all the time, and it’s not the same as seeing it on the wall panel.  I kind of wish we weren’t on the water, though. I think I’m pretty familiar with waves already.”

“I’m sure you are!”  And now I had a clue as to why he was so sleepy.  He was overwhelmed by new input, and needed extra time to process it, which was normally something only noticeable in much younger children.  I supposed it made sense though, in that his experience had been so narrow so far. “If you want to talk to someone about anything - the things you see, how you’re feeling, you know you can talk to me.”

Rather than pleasing him, though, this seemed to dull his spirit.  He gave me a sideward glance and said, “Yeah. I guess.”

I was stung.  “Or, I guess you could talk to Bardock.”

“I don’t want to talk to Bardock about my _ feelings! _ ”

“Okay.”  We sat sipping our tea in silence for a while.  I wondered if he felt like I was pushing him to reveal more than he wanted.  Dammit, I was no good at actual hands-on psychology!

“I didn’t mean to make you feel pressured to talk.  I just wanted you to know you could.”

“Because you’re my psychologist,” he said bitterly.

“Well, no.  Not because I’m your psychologist.  I think I may have ceased to be that the moment I decided to jailbreak you.”

He gave me another quick glance.

“So, why did you then?  Why did you help me?”

I shrugged, strangely unhappy now that the interrogation had switched directions.  “I don’t know. Because it was the right thing to do? Because I care about you as a person?”

“I care about you, too,” he admitted quietly.

I leaned into him to hug him with my free arm, then felt how stiff he went underneath his jacket.  When I let go of him he was blushing and swallowing convulsively.

“So what does that make us?” he asked.

“I’d say friends, but you told me I wasn’t your friend, so…”

“Oh, yeah,” he replied, chuckling a little.  “You probably qualify now. I guess we’re friends.”  He sighed and then risked a direct look at me. I knew that this was hard for him - he rarely made eye contact for more than a moment.

“When we get to Radishya, are you going to stay with me?”

My insides lurched at the mention of my unknown future.  I had been desperately putting off all thought about what came next.  The things I had not thought through on board the Behemoth would become massive issues as soon as I tried to rejoin normal life.  If the military police were after me, and I had run from them under very suspicious circumstances, I was essentially a fugitive.

“For a little while, at least.”

“I think you should stay.”

“I’m not sure that will be possible, Vegeta.”

“Then maybe I should go with you when you leave again.”

I gave him a serious look.  I wasn’t going on this massive mission up to Quebec just to have the stray follow me home again.  “I think you need some stability in the next part of your life. And I don’t know what is going to happen to me.  Possibly it’s not going to be safe for you to be around me.”

“Or you around me, you mean,” he said, turning and staring out over the water again.

“No, I don’t.  But that is a good point.  The family are going to be the most useful to you right now.  And whatever happens, I’m sure we’ll see each other again.”

“Tch!”

...

That night we spent on board the boat, anchored in a deserted bay, lying in cramped berths and talking about the novelty of being rocked to sleep by the lake, only to wake queasy and disorientated.  Ned teased us, cooking eggs in the tiny galley as we forced ourselves out into the rain to ease the seasickness that the wind on the lake had induced. Even Vegeta was green.

“Why are you seasick?” I asked him.  “You’ve spent most of your life on a ship!”

“It never moved like this!” he said.  

Ned opened the cabin hatch.  “Anyone want some scrambled eggs?”

Vegeta lunged for the rail and retched.

…

Ned dropped us at a jetty in a small town on the South West tip of Georgian Bay.  I picked the cheapest accommodation I could find - a lodge above a rowdy bar, and the next morning we caught the bus to Toronto and then another to Montreal for another night’s accomodation at a youth hostel.  I was right about the Saiyan appetites - even eating mostly supermarket sandwiches and the cheapest takeout burgers and fries, we were racing through my cash. At that point I was wondering if I would have enough money to get back, though there was still the question of what I would be getting back to.

The last day of our journey was another private car ride into the hills to Lac Brûlé.  I woke up in the deserted girl’s dormitory room of the hostel, to the faint sound of buzzing.  I was reaching for my wristband automatically before I remembered I probably didn’t want to answer it.  Sickly curious, though, I dug it out of my jacket pocket. The number of missed calls had increased by a few, and included some numbers I didn’t have in my contacts.  I was holding it, parsing through the missed calls when it buzzed again for a moment - a text message. It scrolled across the band.

_ Dad: For god’s sake, Bulma, call us and let us know you’re okay.  Your mother is in the hospital - they think she’s had a heart attack. _

I yelped, sitting up and feeling immediately dizzy with panic.  I got out of bed to find the earpiece that was somewhere in my pack.  When I found it, I hesitated. Was this safe to do? But it wasn’t an unknown number.  It was my dad.

“Call dad!”

There was only one ring before the call was picked up.  I waited for the greeting, but instead there was just a faint clicking noise, like someone typing on an old fashioned keyboard.

“Dad?”  Nothing.  “Dad, it’s me, Bulma, can you hear me?  Did you forget to put the earpiece in?” He did that sometimes, being a little absent minded.  “Dad! I’m going to hang up and call back, okay? There seems to be something wrong with the line.”

Before I could, the call cut off.  I tried again, but the call rang on until my father’s voicemail message, so I tried a second time, with the same result.  I left a message.

“It’s me, Bulma, and I am okay!  But is mom? Call me back! Or send a text if you can’t get through.”

I also left messages and sent a text to my mom, in case she was in a condition to be checking them.

I went down to breakfast feeling ill, but I didn’t share my concerns with Bardock and Vegeta.  I was too close to falling apart, and we were so close to our journey’s end. What could I do about my mother being in the hospital anyway, other than assure her I was all right?  If she had had, or was going to have a heart attack, she was already in the hospital, so all that could be done, would be done. I had felt my father deserved some trouble for his part in the conspiracy, but I hadn’t expected my mother to suffer this much.

The road wended through evergreen forest that was already dusted with snow, passing dozens of lakes, and a handful of small, semi-derelict hamlets and isolated houses, some with warm light in the windows and electric vehicles plugged in in the yard, and some dark and lonely looking.  It was odd to see so many privately owned cars in ordinary people’s hands. Anywhere in a city or town, only the very richest of people went to the trouble and expense of private cars, but here I supposed it was a necessity.

When the hired car informed us we were approaching our destination, the tension in the car rose.  Vegeta jiggled a leg incessantly, and Bardock was biting his nails in the front seat.

“I’m excited.  Are you guys excited?” I said, completely falsely.  I was actually wracked with anxiety, gripping the set of handwritten instructions that Korin had given us between my fingers so hard that my fingertips were starting to feel bruised.  What if we couldn’t find the right spot? What if the Saiyans had been held up? What if they hadn’t even been able to come? We had only faith to go on that Kami and Korin had managed to relay news of our coming to them.

The car stopped in a small, muddy parking lot - I double and triple checked the description to make sure it was the right one - and we got out, unloading our packs and setting off along a lakeside track.  I had hired the car overnight, so it would be waiting for us when we got back. We would need it if Radishya’s family failed to show. 

For ten minutes we walked under trees, then took a branching path, heading out along what I realized was a spit.  The lake could be seen on both sides of the low spine we walked along. Consulting the instructions and then debating them, we decided that the bay coming up on our left was the correct one.  We dropped down to the shore, then opened what we had packed for lunch, like any other tourists out for a freezing cold picnic in the middle of freaking nowhere. We were a little early. We’d been told to allow a window between 2pm and sundown for them to show.  This was just fine for Vegeta, who explored the area with all the curiosity of a four year old, and all the typical cool of a fourteen year old. Bardock and I clambered around the shore with him, too, balancing on logs, watching him poke fungus, and turn over fern leaves, and naming what wildlife and trees we could (unfortunately not much considering that both Bardock and I were mostly familiar only with California).  

The peace was shattered by the crack of a gun somewhere in the distance, followed a moment later by another.  We all froze.

“That was probably a hunter,” said Bardock.  “I saw lots of advertising for guided hunting at that service station we stopped at.  Apparently, you can shoot a bear.”

“I forgot all about bears” I said in horror..  Give me rattlesnakes any day! “We don’t have any guns!”

“You don’t need guns when you’ve got me,” said Bardock, wriggling his fingers and letting a spark run prettily along their tips.

“Oh.  Of course.”

We waited.  Vegeta confirmed that the lake water was extremely cold by slipping while rock-hopping and landing ankle-deep.  I needed to go to the bathroom.

“Did you see a composting toilet back at that car park?” I asked Bardock. 

“Just go here,” he told me.

“I’m not going to pee in the woods where there’s bears if there’s a perfectly good composting toilet nearby.”

“They’re only black bears,” he told me.  “They don’t have grizzlies around here.”

“For your information, grizzly territory has been extending Eastwards for the last fifty years.”

“Have they made it this far yet?”

“...No.  But there are far more fatalities from black bears than grizzlies per annum, anyway”

“So, what are you saying?  We should all walk back to the parking lot?”

“No.”  I realized I was being silly about the bears.  “I suppose you should stay here in case they turn up.”

“I’ll go with you,” said Vegeta.  “To protect you from bears.”

“Looks like you’ve got your own personal security detail!” Bardock teased.  “How are you going to protect her from bears when you can’t control where your lightning goes?”

“I’ll touch the bear and electrocute it that way.”

“Okay, then.  And what are you going to do if the bear is chasing Bulma and you’re not close?”

“I’ll chase the bear, jump on top of it and electrocute!”  

I tried not to smile.

“Ah, I see.  Interesting problem solving skills,” said Bardock.

“Fuck you, Bardock.”

My jaw dropped open at the scandal.  Vegeta really was learning things from Bardock.  Bardock’s eyebrows shot up.

“Spoken like a true Vegeta.”

Vegeta merely looked pissed and set off along the path.

“Bardock!” I hissed at him in admonishment, then ran after Vegeta, leaving my pack with Bardock.

We walked shoulder to shoulder me on the path.

“Bardock is a buttface,” Vegeta said.

“He was only joking.  But yeah, he was a bit of a buttface then.”  We continued in silence for a while.

“I can’t get over how quiet it is here,” Vegeta said.

“I know.”

“And somehow that makes it noisier, too.  Like you can hear birds hopping. Or things creeping through the pine needles.”

We stopped and strained our ears, tuning them to the woodland sounds.  I could hear something low and thrumming. It got steadily louder.

“What’s that?” asked Vegeta.  

“I think it’s a jetcopter, or a helicopter.”

We both looked up as the sound got dramatically louder, but could see nothing.  The sound receded again.

“Maybe it’s those hunters having their kill picked up,” I said, frowning in disapproval.  I had heard of such game hunting practices and they seemed unfair. After all, the animals had no access to helicopters.  The sound, some distance away now, cut off.

At the parking lot we did find a very badly maintained composting toilet that had had its door ripped off.  After using that I had serious regrets about not just going in the woods like Bardock had suggested, which I told Vegeta as we walked back.  

“Don’t tell him I said that, though.  I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.”

We walked along, bumping one another slightly when the path narrowed.  Then Vegeta caught my hand. He was looking at me very earnestly. 

“Hey, what’s up?” I asked, squeezing his hand.  I wondered what he meant by it. Goku had used to hold my hand very casually, even when he was this age, but that was Goku.  Was Vegeta scared?

“Nothing,” he said, starting to smile.  “You know how you said that guy you were kissing isn’t your boyfriend?”

Okay, major misjudgement on my part.  I stopped us in the trail. “Yes?”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No, but-”

We heard a shout up ahead; Bardock’s voice, but we couldn’t hear what he was saying  Vegeta dropped my hand and began running up the path. I followed, shouting, “Vegeta, there’s no need to run!”  But I guess his anticipation was understandable. We turned onto the path to the spit, and were running down the ridge when Bardock appeared fifty yards ahead on the path.

“Run!” he shouted, sprinting towards us.  We skidded to a halt, confused. We  _ were  _ running, but apparently the wrong way.  And then a gunshot, and not far away. Bardock stumbled and fell heavily to the path.

I screamed, grabbing Vegeta’s arm in a talon grip of fear as he sprang forwards.

“No!  LET’S GO!” I roared.  Already I could see movements of camouflaged figures coming up the slopes towards the path.  We turned and ran. I felt like I turned into wind; I had never been able to run so fast in my life.  We made it to the split in the path in seconds and had to grab the trees to haul ourselves around the turn, but the next bend in the trail brought us face to face with two figures.  I screamed, skidding in the loam and veering off sharply into the trees, but Vegeta exploded - I could see the light of his electrical discharge flickering on the trees ahead of me and hear the buzz and crackle.  I turned and saw streamers of light coming off him, making jagged paths to the ground, trees, and into the two people who stood before him. Their clothes smoked, but they still stood.

“Cool it!” the woman ordered.  She was old, dressed in brown walking pants and an olive green coat, and soft hiking boots, looking like an ordinary elderly day walker.  A wild tangle of thick, gray hair splayed over her scarf and collar. The man next to her towered over her, but he was very familiar looking, with dark auburn spikes, also dressed for walking.

The very next instant, shots rang out.  All three threw themselves to the ground and I ducked behind a tree, hearing the whistle and clatter of bullets shredding leaves as they passed.  In that moment I regretted everything that had brought me to that point.

“Get off the path!” the woman shouted, and Vegeta, almost petrified with fear, rolled to the edge of the path and began crawling.  The woman went in the same direction, crouched low, the man in the other, into the trees opposite. I could see people coming onto the track now, soldiers with guns raised. 

“Junior!” she called.

The auburn haired man raised his hands and thick bolts shot out, connecting to the two soldiers in the lead with a bang.  They fell, rigid, their clothes smoking, and the ones behind began firing, taking cover behind trees.

“Take care of the kids!” the man yelled back, running towards the soldiers.

“Junior!  Crap!” She moved towards me, crouched low, still.  “Come on!” she said to Vegeta as she passed. “We need to get out of here!”

She had almost closed the distance when more shots rang out from behind me.  I screamed and threw myself to the dirt. The woman stumbled, sitting down hard behind a fallen log, and for a second I thought she’d been hit.  Soldiers were coming up from the lakeshore towards the path. I tried to stick my head up to see where Vegeta was, but heard and saw gunshots shatter the top edge of the log where the woman was hiding.  There were cracks, gunshots, shouts and utter confusion. I wormed over the tree roots to the other side of my tree, thinking I was surely going to die, and worrying about whether my mom in the hospital would survive the shock of it.

Lightning lit up the trees again, and the men advancing from the lakeshore cried out.  There was a crack, and another, and then a call to “fall back!”

I dared to look up to see the old woman upright, her hands extended, one, two, three bolts of electricity tearing out from her fingertips, hitting trees and soldiers alike.  Smoke, and then fire sprang up, the acrid smells of ozone and boiled sap. It was the most magical and terrifying thing I had ever seen. Then I heard Vegeta cry out. I crawled the rest of the way around the tree and froze.  Vegeta was standing up, a handgun pressed to his head by a soldier, his arms pinned to his sides by the man’s free arm.

“Vegeta!” I screamed, but there was nothing I could do.  I was the only unarmed person in this battle.

“Radishya!” the man shouted.  “Stop with the lightning, or I’ll put a bullet in the boy.”

Radishya turned.  She looked pissed.  She raised her hand at him, but the man shoved the gun harder into Vegeta’s head, wrenching it sideways.

“I must warn you, that won’t work on me, and if you continue on the offensive, I  _ will  _ kill the boy.  My orders are only to bring him in alive as a  _ preference _ .”

“Who the fuck are you?” she asked.  “You’re not a Saiyan!” There was something odd about him though.  He was tall and strongly built, and even at this distance I could see how handsome he was, but his skin was pale and greenish, and his eyes a weird, golden color.  

“You’re right, I am absolutely not.  I’m Lieutenant Zarbon, if you could do me the favor of letting my superiors know who captured you when you’re questioned.”  The soldiers from down by the lake advanced now - I could hear them coming up behind, preparing to take us into custody. There was a  _ thwack  _ of a gas powered gun, and Radishya threw herself to the ground again.  I saw a dart imbed in the tree next to me.

“Run, Bulma!” Vegeta said.  I looked over at him, rigid in this Lieutenant’s arms, his teeth barred in pain.  There was no way I could lead him here, into the mouth of disaster, and then leave him!  And yet there was nothing I  _ could  _ do!

“How did you find us?” Radishya asked, her voice gruff with anger.

“We followed a wristband that had been activated as a beacon.  You can thank the girl for making a call this morning and allowing the activation code to be sent.”

Radishya cast a sidelong look at me, and my mouth fell open in horror.

“But it was from my dad…”

“Was it?” said Zarbon.  “Was it reall-”

There was another crack, and light flashed from behind Zarbon.  He staggered forwards, but didn’t drop Vegeta. Radishya whirled and brought her arms up again, levelling every soldier fanned out behind us, lightning crackling from the end of every finger.  They went down twitching. More gunfire from the other direction had me looking back, ready for the horror of seeing Vegeta executed, but instead the Zarbon guy was carrying him back between the trees, his gun now pointed at the other man, Junior.  He fired again, and Junior threw himself down, and Zarbon had his gun pressed to Vegeta’s head once more. Junior clambered over the uneven ground, heading for the body - and fallen gun - of a soldier.

Zarbon ran.

...

_ “Yes, yes, I remember that day well.  You don’t need to go over my part in it with quite so much detail.” _

_ “I bet you got in trouble!” I said, laughing at the thought.  “You failed to capture Radishya and Junior!” _

_ “The mission was a partial success.”  Zarbon reaches over the table and grabs me by the face, squeezing it painfully between his thumb and fingers.  “Just stick to the story, prisoner.” _


	10. Quebec - 2133

**CHAPTER TEN:  QUEBEC 2133**

 

The woodlands grew quieter again, the shouts and the sounds of booted feet on loamy forest floor retreating.  Nearby someone moaned. Radishya hauled herself stiffly to her feet.

“Xara!” she cursed, and staggered over to the man.  “Junior, are you shot?”

“No.”  He was covered in mud though.  “Are you, okay, Mom?”

“What do you think?” she said darkly, and sagged against him.  

“We’ve got to get out of here before they regroup,” he said.  “I’m sure they won’t just let us go, when they know we’re here.”

I got to my feet and dared to moved towards them on rubbery legs.  “They’ve got Vegeta! And Bardock! We don’t know what happened to Bardock!”

“Where is Bardock?” Junior asked.  Now I got closer to him, his face confused me.  He looked like Vegeta, but middle aged, maybe fifty.  He had a goatee, and his hair was dark red-brown, but it  _ was  _ somehow Vegeta.

“He was on the spit!” I explained.  “When we got out there, they were already chasing him.  They shot him!”

Radishya and junior exchanged glances.  “Then he is either dead, or they have him,” said Radishya.  “Now, we’ve got to move. Are you coming with us?”

I nodded.  Staying here alone and fending for myself wasn’t an option.

“Then you’ve got to ditch that wristband they tracked you with,” she said.

“I already did,” I said, pointing towards the spit.  “I left it in my bag. With Bardock!”

I started to cry and found myself dragged along, almost blind and stumbling over ferns and logs and through twiggy saplings.  Junior, the older, larger Vegeta, towed me with a hand hooked under my arm, and on his other side, Radishya leaned, muttering as she went.

“Well, that went fucking sideways.  Fasha’s going to have a meltdown.”

“Let’s not worry about Fasha until we get home,” said Junior.

I came back to myself, urged by new fear as I heard the sound of a jetcopter taking off again, and walked by myself, letting Junior help Radishya with two hands.

“I’m going to carry you, Ma.”

“Shoo!” she said.  “I’m not that decrepit!”

We came to a 4WD vehicle track in the woods and followed that uphill until we came to a parked 4x4, dark blue, scratched and muddy like a real farm vehicle.  Junior opened the door and pulled the seat forwards to let me in the back, then he picked his mother up and put her in the front before climbing in the driver’s side.  He took the steering wheel - this was no self-driving vehicle. The steering wheel had metal contact plates on it and wires that ran down to the floor. As soon as he touched it the whirr of the air conditioner started and the truck rolled forwards.

We could still hear the jetcopter overhead somewhere.

“Don’t leave the cover of the trees until they leave,” Radishya warned.

“Yes, Mom.”

We went slowly, jostled and jounced by the backcountry lane for miles until we came to a sealed road.  Then Junior switched driving modes.

“Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

…

We drove seventy miles in who-knew what direction.  I was a mess, struggling to take in what had happened.  Bardock  _ gone _ .  Vegeta  _ gone _ .  Both  _ my fault _ .  The realizations were so big that I could only hold on to one at a time, so that I forgot the others.  But when I remembered it hit me all over again, crushing my chest with grief.

Radishya twisted in her seat to see me.

“I bet you’re wishing you hadn’t made that call about now,” she said.

“I didn’t know about the wristband tracking us!” I said, the words distorted with my tears.

“I know you didn’t, though it was a damn fool thing to bring a registered wristband with you.”

Our destination was a farm, with two farmhouses plus various barns and sheds clustered together.  One house looked at least two hundred years old, and the bigger one looked at least a hundred years old, both made of fieldstone but constructed in wildly different styles.  I followed Junior and Radishya inside the larger house with bigger windows, and was hit with the smell of a roast dinner. A older woman with short, iron grey hair stood at the stove and turned, wooden spoon still poised.

“So, did you bring the new additions back?” she asked.  And then she registered the scorch marked clothes of the other two, and the mud on all three of us.  Her eyes darted to me and back to the door, which had closed. “What happened?” she demanded.

Three young children ran into the room.

“Jida!” the one in the lead cried.  The woman immediately blocked them. 

“Out!”

“But why?”

“Out!  Go find Amy and tell her she’s in charge.”

The children were disappointed to be thrown from the kitchen when they had expected new visitors.  They cast a glance at me and left. Radishya sank into a chair at the kitchen table with a groan.

“Mom!”  The woman grasped Radishya’s hands.  “Are you hurt?”

“No.  Just exhausted myself.”

“I would refute that,” said Junior.  “You took some tumbles.”

Radishya waved that away.  “Go fetch the others, would you, Junior?”

“For dinner?” the woman asked.

“For a family meeting.”

She paled.  Then when Junior had followed the children through the door to the rest of the house she turned to me.

“Who’s this?  Is this the doctor that was meant to be coming?”

I nodded, still not up to talking.  Radishya flicked a finger at me. “Fasha, this is Bulma.  Bulma, this is Fasha, my daughter.”

Knowing this, I could at last see the resemblance between her and the various Tomas I had known, behind the loose skin of her face, the pouches under her eyes and the extra padding around her matronly hips.  She was older than Junior. My guess would be that she was in her early sixties.

“Where are the two Saiyans?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“We’ll wait for the others to be here,” said Radishya.  “I’m sure none of us want to go through this twice.” 

Fasha stood up, eyes flashing.

“Mom!”  She stalked away.  “God damn it!”

People began filtering into the room, sent hither by Junior.  I was introduced very briefly to Claire who was Junior’s wife, Francois who was Fasha’s husband, Jed who was an original line Nappa, but who didn’t like to be known by that name, Eloise who was Fasha’s daughter, her husband Benedict, Delphi, who was Fasha’s second daughter and Adrienne, her wife, and Jacques, who was Fasha’s youngest child and his wife Mana.  They sat around the table assessing me and looking worried, trying to guess what had happened, though neither Radishya nor I could be drawn. When Junior was back in the room, having set his oldest child Amy to babysit the various cousins, the air was thick with dread.

“So it went really badly?” Fasha guessed.

Junior explained what had happened, and he thankfully left out the part about how our group had been tracked.  No one was really paying attention to me anyway. The news was very grave.

“How do we know they haven’t tracked  _ you  _ here?” Eloise asked.  They all looked scared.  Fasha had gone one step further and was weeping angry tears.

“We left the compromised device behind,” Junior explained.  “But I guess they now know we are somewhere in the vicinity.

“Merde!” said, Francois, slamming his fist on the table.  “We finally have a stable life!”

“This is why I don’t want to you to still be picking up waifs and strays!” Fasha yelled at her own mother.  Radishya looked smaller and older than ever, and sat back into her chair, exhausted in the face of Fasha’s anger.  “You don’t just risk yourself, you risk all of us!”

“Fasha!” Junior, spoke over the top of her.  “I’m one of those strays, remember? And Jed!”

“Well, I’m glad we have you, and I love you both, but we’ve got to draw the line somewhere!” Fasha replied.  “I’ve got five grandchildren! You’ve got your four children - think of them! Now we’re going to upheave our lives again and go on the run!  We can’t keep doing this!”

“I’ll do what I do, Fasha,” Radishya said, her voice breaking.  The kitchen fell into silence again when she spoke. “Don’t forget that we lost two souls tonight.”

“We don’t need to mourn them,” Fasha pointed out.  “We never even met them, and there are hundreds more like them out there.”

“They’re your own blood you’re talking about!  You own brothers! My own sons-”

“They’re tweaked clones-”

“They’re my genetic children!  I won’t abandon them if I can help them!”

“Mom!  Listen to reason!  You are one person!  You can’t save them all yourself!”

“I’ll save the ones that can be saved.”  Unexpectedly, she burst into tears. The rest of the adults looked on in disquiet until Eloise got up and went to put her arms around her grandmother.  “That might have been the last chance I get to see my Kakarott grown!” Radishya moaned.

“You’re exhausted, Jida,” Eloise said.  “Do you want to go to bed?”

“No, I don’t want to go to fucking bed!”  Abruptly she stared sniffing back her tears and wiping her eyes viciously.  “I’m starving! Fasha, serve dinner already!”

Woodenly, Fasha complied with her mother’s order, and the rather overdone roast leg of lamb and vegetables was served.  I looked at the slice of meat placed on my plate and my stomach balled up, bile starting to rise. Some of the others around the table seemed to have no appetite either, but for those Saiyans, and half-Saiyans, the need for food seemed to trump all.

“Do we have time to be eating dinner?” Claire asked, her voice trembling with unshed tears.  “Shouldn’t we be getting ready to leave? Packing the kids up?”

“I don’t think it’s that urgent,” Junior said.  “If they don’t know where we are it will take them a little while to figure it out.  They will need to do some sleuth work. Remember, we haven’t made it easy for them.”

“And if they do know where we are?” Adrienne asked.

“Then it’s already too late,” said Radishya harshly.  “So let’s not waste a good meal!”

They ate for some minutes in silence, beyond the sounds of eating and the muffled thumps and cries of children playing in another part of the house.

“I agree with Jida,” said Delphi eventually.  Fasha gave her daughter a quelling glare, but Delphi shrugged.  “I do.”

“You don’t have any children of your own to think of,” Fasha pointed out.

“ _ Jida _ is thinking of her own children.”

Fasha went back to ladling gravy on her potatoes.

“I will always thank Radishya for taking back her children,” said Jed.  It was the first I had heard the big man speak. He was even taller than Bardock, and more thickly built, and was almost bald, save for a jaunty patch still clinging to the top of his head.  I thought about Tora 71, and what he would feel about losing his hair as an adult. He’d probably take it with dismay and then a laugh. Tora 71 had been a pretty easy going kid.

“I don’t know that tonight is the time for debating these things,” Eloise said.  “We only need to decide where we’re going to go, and when.”

“And how,” Mana pointed out bitterly.

“Excuse me,” I said, unable to face the food on my plate or this family anymore.  “Can I use your bathroom?” They all turned to me like the pet cat had started talking.

“Sure, it’s just down the hall and to the left,” said Eloise.

I followed the directions, and upon seeing the toilet bowl, my stomach decided to empty itself.  I rushed over and vomited nothing but bile and air, but it went on and on. Guilt. Fear. Grief.  Goku, Gine, Bardock, Vegeta, Yamcha - what had happened to Yamcha? All because of me, trying to help and screwing it up.  My misery became physical and all consuming, and it felt like it would never end, but it did. I knelt on the floor, flushed the bowl with a trembling hand, and had no clue how to proceed from that moment on.

“Hey, are you okay?” a nervous voice asked behind me.

I spat the taste from my mouth, my eyes still streaming from the effort of retching.  What a question.

“I’m not sick.” I settled on.  I wiped my face with toilet paper and blew my nose before finally forcing myself to face whoever it was, still sitting on the floor.  A teenage girl was hovering near the door, brown haired and brown eyed. I guessed she was Junior’s daughter. She had that keen eyed look, and that natural air of suspicion that I associated with Vegeta, but she was a few years older than Vegeta -  _ my  _ Vegeta, anyway. 

“What’s wrong then?”

I shook my head.  I couldn’t and wouldn’t go into it.  “Stress.”

“Are you one of the new people?” she asked.  “That are joining the family?”

“No.”

She cast a glance over the shoulder, back towards the closed kitchen door.  “Then what’s going on in there?”

“Decisions,” I said, and pulled myself to my feet.

“So they chucked you out for their ‘grown-up’ talk?” she said.  “That’s typical. I turned eighteen months ago and they still treat me like a kid - like I have nothing to contribute to the decisions that get made!”

“Are you Amy?” I guessed.

“Yes.  Do you want to come on through?  We lit the fire earlier. You can meet my brothers and cousins.”

I felt numb and stupid, and like nothing more than curling up in a ball in a corner, but I followed her, as I definitely didn’t want to go back into the kitchen.  She took me down the hall to a large lounge, with a log burner crackling merrily away. Three long couches were arranged around it, with rugs both before and behind it, and a wall of glass looking out onto the dark farm.  On the rug behind the couch, three young children were playing with an electric race-car track, stacking the track with building blocks to see if they could get the plastic cars to smash through. On one couch two girls, around nine and eleven years old were “taking care” of a baby who seemed at the least bemused by their play.  A boy of around fifteen was reading on the next couch but keeping an eye on the girls, and another younger boy was giving the fire an unnecessary poking. They didn’t all have dark hair. Some of them were brown or blonde.

“I think it needs another log,” the boy said.

“It doesn’t need another log, Nate!” the oldest boy said.

“You’re only saying that because you don’t want to go out and chop more wood.”

“Go out yourself and chop more wood.”

“But Mom said I wasn’t allowed to!”

“Well, I don’t care if you chop your toes off.”

The girl sighed.  “Welcome to my madness,” she said to me, and sat on the free couch.  She pointed at the two girls. “Those are my cousins Melia and Jasmine, and the baby is my youngest sister Kayla.  That’s my brother Jacob.” The teenaged boy waved. Amy pointed at the younger one, busy trying to light a candle using a splinter of wood that was on fire.  “That’s my idiot brother Nate. And behind us are Joseph, Maddie and Terry, my cousins.”

I sat next to her; my legs were trembling.   

“So, if you’re not staying, where are you from, and are you going back again?” Amy asked.

“I’m from Los Angeles.”

“Really?  That’s so cool!  Is it really like summer all the time there?”

“I guess it depends on your definition of summer.”  I closed my eyes for a second, almost overcome with exhaustion.  Was I really only two years older than this girl? I felt a hundred.  I felt a thousand years old, and then I found myself talking about my childhood - my late and delayed childhood, ended only a very short time ago, though dust was already settling on its grave.  I told her about my best friends Goku and Krillin. I didn’t tell her anything about Bardock or Gine. I didn’t talk about Gohan’s death, or Illuminary Inc or the disappearances. I just told her about the city, and hanging out, and Goku the overly friendly half-Saiyan who was ready to give everyone a chance.

“Is he coming here?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.”

She frowned.  “What  _ did  _ happen today?”

I opened my mouth.  “I…”

“Yeah?”

_ I screwed up. _

“I don’t know.”

She nodded, disappointed.  “Well, I’m going to go see if there’s any dessert.  Do you want some?”

"No thanks.”

She left me, and I let my head fall back against the back of the couch, my eyes sliding shut.  The room started to softly spin, turning over, the voices of children going high and falling on top of me like heavy blankets I could not fight against.

...

I awoke in near darkness to the glow of the embers in the log burner.  There was a blanket over me and a cushion under my head. Alone at last, and far from home, I wept.

...

“We’re leaving here tomorrow,” Junior told me at breakfast.  Everyone, even the children, was sombre that morning. Fasha and Eloise dispatched breakfast in hurried silence, serving Radishya in a manner that suggested they’d been chastened last night.    

“It’s time for you to decide what to do,” Radishya said to me.  She was wearing a shawl that morning, and looking far more like her eighty seven years than she had in walking pants and boots.  “Will you go back and continue the search for Goku and Gine? Or will you come with us?”

“Where are you going?” I asked.

She gave me a calculating look.  “We decided not to tell you, unless of course, you want to come with us.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“I don’t trust you not to get captured and tortured,” she said bluntly.

I thought on it, staring at my bowl.  I had gotten half the porridge down before my autonomic system decided to return to panic mode and shut up shop on my stomach.  Should I go into hiding with a family of perfect strangers - a tight family, with politics at play within it - or return to what I could in Los Angeles?  I had blown all chance of working at the WRU, if there was any chance to begin with, and perhaps all chance of a normal life, but I could live in the South East Wilderness, where at least I’d be within a hundred and thirty miles of the WRU.  I could look up my old roommate's girlfriend and see if she knew how to create a new identity. And what about my mother? My father? Had my mother really been in the hospital? Had my father ever called me? Or had he had his phone confiscated the moment the military police turned up at their house?  Had I implicated my father in my own plot? I wasn’t sure if he deserved my sympathy or not. If I stayed with the family, what would I do? I would be a burden on them, not much more useful than another child to feed.

“I want to go back to LA,” I said.  “Is that okay?”

“It’s fine by us.  We can drop you in a town after breakfast so you can make your way back from there.  Junior will take you.”

Junior nodded in acquiescence.

“Thank you.”  

I had a bit of money.  Maybe not enough to get back, but I found I didn’t particularly care.

“We have an anonymous email account,” Radishya said.  “If you set one up, too, we can communicate, should we need to.”

“I already have an anonymous account set up.”

“We’ll get Francois to check it out then, and make sure it’s up to scratch.  I can’t let some foolishness lead the authorities back to me and mine.”

I nodded, feeling the full sting of those words.  

“I’ll let you know if there’s anything particularly pertinent to your situation.  Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Do you want to get yourself cleaned up?  I think there’s time.”

Fasha stepped into my field of view.  “I’ll show you where the bathroom is and give you a towel.”

I followed her, unable to make my mind up about something as simple as whether I wanted a shower or not.  As she looked in a linen cupboard she moaned and ran a hand gently down the neatly folded stack of sheets.  “I suppose there’s no way we’ll be taking all the linen with us!”

“Sorry,” I whispered, feeling hollowed out by sorrow.

“It’s not your fault,” she sighed.  “It’s just the shitty hand that life dealt our family.  You probably think I’m pretty heartless, right?”

I didn’t answer.  I understood her unhappiness, but yes, I did think she was heartless.

“I’m not,” she told me, not requiring an answer.  “I’ve just been disappointed too many times, I’ve stopping wishing for ways to break my heart.”

“What do you mean?”

She handed me a towel.  “I mean that I lost my brothers and sister when I was four years old.  I’ve been missing them ever since. I don’t even know if they’re alive by this point.  My mom has been trying to sniff out or break out any Saiyan for the almost sixty years, and she’s had only three successes!  And the failures are always…” She shook her head. “It crushes mom, but she won’t stop. And I can’t live like that. There’s an endless supply of Saiyan clones out there.  I can’t be thinking of them all as my brothers and sisters or I’ll go mad!”

“How come you were never taken?” I asked her as she led me on the upstairs bathroom.

“I was.  I suppose you heard about the home we lived in while they studied us?  A researcher there had the clever idea to get the courts to declare my parents unfit, and make us kids wards of the state, so then they could do whatever they felt like with us.  Then they moved us into the first Illuminary Inc quarters without my parents’ knowledge or consent. But my carer knew that wasn’t right. She figured out how to smuggle me out and took me back to mom and dad.  But she only had access to me. My brothers and sister stayed. That was the first time the family went on the run, and we’ve been running ever since.”

...

An hour later I was back in the truck alongside Junior.  I had nothing to pack - I had a lot less to take home than I set out with.  Before he even started the car he looked at me. It was so disconcerting to see Vegeta’s face, so much older.  He was obviously handsome, but too old me for me find attractive. I guessed Vegeta would grow up handsome.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Because I think I could talk mom round to letting you come with us at first, if you’re not okay to travel alone.”

I shook my head, because an idea had occurred to me.  Right now, Vegeta would most likely be in the quarantine habitats at Illuminary Inc.  I knew where they were, and sure, there was a tall wall and a spike-topped fence between him and I, but with some determination and planning, I’m sure I could get in.  What would I need? Something to get around the electronic locks, a plank of wood or two, and a rope?

“No, I want to get back as soon as possible.”

“Okay, then.”

The ride into town was slow, as it was snowing.

“Is is safe for you to talk?” I asked Junior.

“Yes.  Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Because you’re driving.  I thought you might need the concentration.”

“Driving is not that hard, once you know how.  What did you want to talk about?”

“Does your mother hate me for what happened?”

He shot a look over at me.  “No! Well, I’m  _ pretty  _ sure not.”

“I screwed up though.  It’s my fault.”

“Everyone screws up at some point.  It’s just that when the stakes are this high our oversights and flubs become so…”

“Fatal.”

“You don’t know they’re dead.”

That’s right - Vegeta was very likely alive, and I had to remember that.  Bardock on the other hand, I had less hope for. 

“Mom’s just a very direct person,” he told me.  “I think she hit her bullshit limit decades ago, and she knows she won’t live forever, so… She just comes right out and says whatever she means.”

I asked another thing I’d been wondering.  “You call her Mom. Is she your...actual mother?  Are you the original Vegeta?” I remembered Bardock saying something about this, but I couldn’t remember what, and Junior had no iris markings.

“No.  I was a first generation clone.  They only tweaked my hair color to tell me apart from the other Vegeta clones.  That was their earlier idea for differentiating us, until they ran out hair shades.  Mom and Dad busted me out of the first research facility when I was still a kid. It was their first rescue mission.”

“Your dad?  What happened to him”  No one had yet mentioned him.

Junior pressed his lips together for a second.  “He’s dead.”

“What happened?  Was it long ago?”

“I killed him.  By accident. So you see, that was  _ my  _ big screw up.”

“Sorry,” I whispered, wishing I hadn’t asked.

“I was going through the early fade, and couldn’t control it well.  Mom and Dad thought they knew what they were dealing with, because they’d already had to handle it with Fasha.  But…” He raised a hand from the steering wheel towards the heavens. “It is not the same for all of us. And every day we all regret that we made the assumption that it was.”

We sat in silence for a while, but in the end my curiosity got the better of me.  “Your children, and Fasha’s, did they not go through the same thing?”

“No.  The half-Saiyans are different, thank god.  They’re different from each other, too. Going by Fasha’s children, they don’t all seem to develop powers, and when they do, they don’t tend to come on until fourteen or fifteen - about the time that the fade would happen in a full Saiyan.  And then when the powers do set in, they’re not the same either. My daughter Amy is a classic example. She can produce lightning bolts. Jacob can only produce steady current of a relatively low power, but he can do it for a long time. Jacques builds up charge, but can’t seem to direct it, so he has to be careful not to let it build up, or he starts electrocuting everything and everyone.  Delphi can also produce lightning, but Eloise has never shown any ability.”

“I think that’s what happened with my friend Goku.  He started to show powers, but he still couldn’t control them well.  He accidentally electrocuted his Grandpa, and put him in the hospital.”

“Sounds about right.”

He dropped me in a cluster of buildings hugging the side of the road, and I got out, pulling my coat and hat on tight against the cold.

“Goodbye.”

“I hope to see you again, Bulma.”

“You, too, Vegeta.”

He flinched.

“I mean, Junior.”  I started to close the door, and then decided I must ask.  “Do you hate the name Vegeta? Like Jed doesn’t like Nappa?”

“I like the name,” he said, “but that’s the name of...the original.  Of my parents’ oldest son. At the time they brought me home, it had only been around twelve years since they’d lost him.  I don’t think it seemed right to anyone that I go by the same name. Fasha started calling me Vegeta Junior, and Junior stuck.”

I smiled,  The name totally didn’t suit him.

He drove away, and I stomped down the street, looking for a car to hire, but didn’t find a single one.  They all appeared to be privately owned. I walked into the small general store and asked the clerk there where I could hire a car in town.

“Town?” he repeated in amused and heavily accented English.  “Don’t see any  _ town  _ round here.  The nearest car is probably in La Tuque.”

“How far away is that?”

He shrugged.  “Forty, fifty kilometres?”

I hesitated, working it out into miles.  “Wait a second - How far away from Montreal am I?”

“Four or five hour drive.  To be honest, it’s closer to Quebec City.  How did you get here?”

“Dropped off.”  Damn, this was going to be way more expensive than I thought.  I wasn’t even sure I had the funds for a car ride back to Montreal.  “Could I use your wristband?”

He made a face.  

“I only want to call a car here from La Tuque.  Or you can call them yourself. Please! I know it’s a hassle from a stranger.”

“What is wrong with your wristband?” he asked, looking at the loaner on my wrist.

“It’s cash only.”

His face made it clear that further explanation was necessary.

“There’s been a problem with my account.  It’s been cut off.”

He rolled his eyes.  “I’ll do it,” he said, making it sound like it was a major hassle.  “But if you ask me, better to call your parents and tell them to come get you.”

“Thanks, but that’s not an option.”

He instructed his band to find and call the company at La Tuque.

“They say they want an account up front to charge it to, for a call out that far.  It’s got to be the same number as made the call.”

“ _ What? _ ”

He shrugged.  “Guess they don’t want to come all the way out here for a crank call.  Maybe you should try hitch hiking?”

_ Hitch hiking? _  It sounded like something out of an old-timey horror movie!  The kind of thing that got a female victim dead.

I went back out on the street again to follow his advice, and the snow was coming down harder.  After twenty minutes of shivering and no cars passing, I began to wonder if he’d been making a joke.  Maybe I  _ would  _ have to call my parents, after all.  But were their phones even still in their possession?  Were they being monitored? Would my dad turn me in? Somehow I couldn’t believe that.  He had, afterall, done his best to convince me not to get involved with Illuminary Inc.

I stepped into the liveliest building on the short street - a cafe with around eight people eating an early lunch or maybe brunch.  Was it Sunday? It was probably Sunday, and maple syrup covered pancake stacks and salmon filled bagels mocked my nose with their scents.  I picked a likely looking target - a middle aged woman who looked neither too poor or too rich. I walked over to her table, and she looked up.

“Excuse me, but I’ve been stranded in this place with a wristband that the account has become disconnected from.  Can I ask you a big favor?”

“What is that?”

“Can I use your wristband to call someone?  I need to get hold of my parents. I can’t call them directly - it’s a linked account, so I think it will be down for them, too.  But if I can call their friend next door?”

“Yes!  Of course.  What number do I call?”

“Can you do a directory search for Tansy Heartwright of Wrightswood, California?”

The woman took out her earpiece and put it on speaker mode, then put the call through.  To my relief, Tansy, a woman I had met only twice, answered very quickly.

“Hey, this is kind of an emergency, but it’s Bulma Briefs, here.  Are my parents home, do you know?”

“Oh!  I have no idea.  I will pop over, right now.  What’s happened, Bulma? There seems to have been no end of comings and goings at your parents house!”

“Are they alone now?”

I could hear her walking.  “I think so, I can see no cars outside.  But why are you calling me, not them?”

“I can’t explain right now.  I just really need to talk to my mom.”

I heard her knocking, and then my Mom, they exchanged words, and then my mom was practically shrieking over the speakerphone.  “Bulma! Bulma, are you okay?”

“Yes!  Mom are you alone?  Can you talk?”

“Alone except for Tansy.”

“Mom, were you in the hospital?”

“No!  Though I’ve been ill with worry.  The military police took your father away days ago, Bulma, and they haven’t given him back to me!  They think he and you had something to with an escaped Saiyan! What’s _ going on? _ ”

It was worse than I thought.

“I...I’m… I’ll explain when I’m home.  But mom, I need help getting home. I need you to order a car for me from-” I had no idea what the name of this place was!  “From the butt-end of nowhere, Quebec.”

“Quebec!”

“Can you do it, Mom?  Just to Montreal. Then I might need you to transfer me some more money so I can get home the rest of the way.”

“Oh, jeez, Bulma, of course I can!”  I could hear she was almost crying. “But how did you get yourself into this mess?”

I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder.  “Just a second, Mom.” I stood up, turning to see who had accosted me.  One of the other cafe patrons - a heavyset older man in jeans and sheepskin coat.  He kept his hand on my shoulder, and with the other, flipped out a police badge.

“Bulma Briefs?”

I didn’t answer; my heart stopped for that moment.

“There’s a general warrant out for a young woman matching your description, five foot one, purple hair, red jacket, name of Bulma Briefs.”

The heat of shame filled my cheeks.  A week of subterfuge, blown by one phone call made in a cafe in front of a cop.

“I’m going to arrest you now, and advise you not to make a fuss.”

I twisted out of his hand instead and ran around the table, heading for the door, but the waitress deliberately stood in front of me, slowing me with her wide girth.  By the time I got around her, the cop had my arm in a ruthless grip, and I found myself bourne face down to the peeling laminate floor.

...

_ “I was disappointed that my unit didn’t catch up to you first.  You fell into the civilian arm of the law, and so things progressed that way.  Illuminary Inc pressed charges, you were denied bail, I believe. The solution was not the one I would have gone with.  I guess it must have sounded effective enough at that time, but I daresay they regretted it when it cost them almost as much negative publicity as they sought to paint you with.  And so two promising careers were destroyed, not just one. I bet you wish you hadn’t involved your sister, in the end.” _

_ I do, but I don’t give him the satisfaction of confirming it.  I see him quite clearly. The serum has mostly worn off, other than the roiling nausea.  I hadn’t had to tell him the last twenty minutes or so of this tale, but as it was irrelevant, and he already knew most of it anyway, and the longer I kept on the irrelevancies, the longer I could hold off spilling the real secrets. _

_ “I don’t know.  Some people sat up and took notice,” I tell him.  _

_ “The same people that think the government made the war up in order to justify the super state, and that they have a secret base on the moon!” _

_ “Well, don’t they?” _

_ Zarbon looks at me in irritation.  “If I had found you and not that police officer, this interrogation would have happened much sooner.  And that would have been the last story you ever told.” _

_ “This really incentivises me to talk,” I say.  “Nice people skills, Zarbon.” _

_ “Cui, the prisoner needs more serum,” he says.  Cui, ever happy to obey, sticks another needle in my arm. _

_ “What do you want to know about now?” I ask as I feel the warmth spreading.  “The trial? What I said to my parents?” _

_ “That is all very well recorded,” Zarbon says.  “Let’s get on to something I am much more curious about.  Our dear Vegeta. I want to know all about your time in The Bronx together.” _

_ I feel myself falling again, into warmth, into happy sleepiness, the nausea fading to the background.  I stretch out, a hand dragging across a warm, denim clad thigh in my memory. _


	11. No Man's Land

**CHAPTER ELEVEN: NO MAN’S LAND 2144**

 

I woke to an annoyingly cheerful alarm of birds chirping and gentle guitar music.  A body stirred next to me in the warmth under the covers, sliding out from under the hand I had draped over his leg, jostling me and rocking the sour feeling of a hangover in my stomach.  I opened my eyes, wondering whose bed I was in and found it was still dark. The alarm was silenced by the person next to me.

“Five thirty AM,” said Vegeta, his deep, gruff grumble grounding me in my here and now - sleeping in the cab of a work truck in Yonkers.  Urgh.

“Can we sleep in?” I asked weakly.

Vegeta was already sitting up and pulling the duvet back, making me suck in my breath at the loss of warmth.

“It was your idea to set my wristband to wake us up at this time,” he pointed out.

Right.  Last night’s Bulma writing checks that today’s Bulma couldn’t cash again.  Not only had I overdone the pretend drinking last night, I just plain hadn’t had enough sleep, two nights in a row.

“So if it was my idea, can I change my mind?” I asked, catching the corner of the duvet and dragging it back over myself.

“No,” he said, pulling it back out of my hands.  “It was a good idea - if they wake up and report the truck missing it could be disabled at any moment.  Besides, I’m starving already.”

“I feel like crap.”

“If it’s any consolation, so do I.”

“I bet I feel more crap.”

“Whose fault is that?”

I glowered at him in the dark, pouting at the dark shadow of his face.

“Come on,” he said, nudging me with his leg.  “We’ll get hot chocolate.”

An absurd spark of joy lit in me at that, and then I wised up.  “Are you making fun of me?”

“Perhaps.  Now move your bones, Private Briefs, or I will open that door and push you out.”

...

We went back to the diner we’d had dinner at, its robots working tireless 24 hour shifts, though we could hear the sound of a human being singing along to the radio while he cooked in the kitchen.  I decided that a hot chocolate wasn’t strong enough and ordered a mocha, and Vegeta ordered us breakfast burritos and cleared the muffin basket into a takeaway bag. As I had previously observed, a Saiyan was not a cheap person to take on an escape mission.

We ate on the way to the perimeter fence and then pulled on the stolen coveralls.  I tried to stuff my coat under mine, but it was no good. The collar was too high and thick, and it bunched ridiculously around my hips.  I already looked a bit like a clown with the baggy pants, sleeves and legs too long and rolled up to keep them out of the way, without going the whole hog with the fat-bottomed look.  I left it in the backseat. Hopefully we would be in the truck the whole way anyway.

We picked a different gate than the one we’d encountered the other day, just in case the same guard was on duty.  It was lit with floodlights.

“You’re here early,” said the man who leaned out of the gatehouse.  He was old and thin, and had on a hat, scarf, gloves, and thick coat, yet still hugged himself against the cold.  His eyes landed on me with interest, on the far side of the cab truck.

“Yeah, I need to get the engineer in there before the boys start for the morning,” said Vegeta, jerking his thumb at me.  “There’s a building that’s been a bit of a headache to take down.”

The guy nodded, accepting that answer readily.  “Ah, I’ve tackled a few tough nuts in my time. Just sign in and you can be on your way.”  As he spoke, another figure in army fatigues loomed out of the darkness at his side, and jerked his chin at Vegeta in greeting.

The older man handed Vegeta a display, and Vegeta quickly passed it to me with a look of consternation.  I entered the name of the company, which thankfully had been written on the side of the truck. For the vehicle number I quickly stuck my head out the driver’s side window to look at the number painted on the side.  For the personnel I sweated for a moment. I remembered some of the names of the guys from last night, but I never knew their surnames. Vegeta looked at me, in mute anxiety as I wrote Callum’s name in. Then I noticed that his coverall had a name printed on the breast.  Brown. I looked down at my own coveralls. McAllister. And hadn’t Callum said he was sharing a room with Leroy? These must be their coveralls. I didn’t know which name belonged to which, though, but it was a fifty-fifty chance. My eyes flicked to the military guard. If we got this wrong, could we laugh this off as a misunderstanding, or would this become an incident?

I entered Callum McAllister and Leroy Brown, and handed the display back to Vegeta, who handed it to the old man.  The man looked at it, pressed a few things, and waited. The soldier next to him smiled at me. I forced myself to smile back.  

“That checks out,” said the old man.  Then he looked at me. “Are you Callum or Leroy?”

“Callum,” I said, remembering which name was on my chest.

“Funny name for a pretty girl like you.”

“My parents wanted a boy.”  I shrugged my shoulders. “I think it suits me.”

The two men chuckled.

“I think so, too.  Off you go. Don't forget your hard hats!”

The gates swung open and I ordered the truck forwards, headlights illuminating the rubble piles ahead.  We were in.

And then twenty yards through the gate, suddenly the truck stopped.

“No road layout ahead,” the truck told us.  “Switch to manual drive mode or turn around.”

I stared at it.

“Switch to manual,” said Vegeta.

“Manual mode engaged.”

“I don’t know how to drive, do you?” I asked, placing my hands on the steering wheel.  Somehow it just never occurred to me that we would have to  _ drive  _ the truck, even though Callum had told me way more than I wanted to know about it.

“Yes.  We had to learn how to drive the APCs.  Switch seats, and I’ll drive.”

I knew that there were pedals for controlling acceleration and braking, and reached out with my feet until they bumped up against something like that.  If that’s all there was to it, how hard could it be? I pressed one pedal, and nothing happened. I pressed the other, and the truck jerked forwards.

“Fuck!” said Vegeta as I took my foot off the accelerator just as quickly and hit the brake.  He was caught by the seat belt he wore.

“Let me drive,” he urged.

I gripped the steering wheel harder.  “I’ve always wanted to try driving,” I whispered.

“Is now the time to fulfill your dreams?”

“Maybe.”

He looked at me stonily.

“Oh, come on!  It can’t be that hard.  There are only three controls - stop, go, and direction!”

“There is more to driving than that.”

“I will go slow.  Now that I know how sensitive the pedals are, I’m sure it will be fine.”

Without waiting for an answer I looked out the windshield and very lightly pressed the accelerator.  The truck engine whined and we slowly advanced towards the rubble ahead, bouncing over bits of concrete debris on the broken asphalt.  The feeling of power was immediately intoxicating.

“Start turning!” Vegeta warned me.

I turned, wondering what he was panicking about, and then turned, and kept turning the wheel - it had not been as responsive as I had assumed.  I took my foot off the accelerator, but the momentum still carried us forwards slowly until the driver’s side corner crashed into the rubble.

“Oops.”

“Bulma!”

“How do I reverse?”

We made our way slowly through the destroyed streets, me gaining confidence with driving, Vegeta irritated and constantly threatening to haul me out of the driver’s seat, but never actually doing so.  It really wasn’t so hard, once I was used to the controls and the momentum of the truck. I liked it. Maybe it hadn’t been much of a lie when I’d told Callum that I wanted to be a truck driver.

The piles of rubble went on a long time, but then we came to an area that was still in the process of demolition.  Cranes and diggers loomed out of the darkness, frozen in the act, and the occasional lamppost still stood, street signs pointing to roads that no longer existed.  Sometimes I had to backtrack, as the way forwards ended in a cul-de-sac of destruction, like we were rats running a giant maze. By then Vegeta had desisted complaining and was stuffing his mouth with muffins instead.  As he unwrapped his third, I said, “Save some for lunch!”

“We'll be there before lunchtime, I would hope.  Though with your driving, maybe not.”

“Huh!”

I pressed the accelerator a little harder.

It was getting light when the streets stopped again, ending quite suddenly in a landscape scraped clean except for impressive mountains of debris.  The northerly wind was whipping dust off their peaks and sides in streams and flurries. I stepped on the power in the wide open space, and we cut directly South.  I began to feel nervous. I had no connection with The Bronx nation, I only knew that Radishya did. Hopefully that would be enough to see us cordially received, but I really didn't know what to expect.  Perhaps they were more suspicious than the South East Wilders. 

But as I rounded another mound of rubble I saw something that had me stepping on the brakes, causing the truck to judder to a halt.  Up ahead was another, shorter, more temporary looking chain link fence, and this one was in front of an encampment. Tents and vehicles filled the space between the fence and a long barrier of rubble, built like a levy that stretched away in either direction.  Soldiers moved through the camp, but not all of them were inside the fence. Two in front of it immediately raised their weapons to us, and began walking forwards.

I automatically put up my hands while Vegeta lowered his window.

“Sorry!” he yelled, as soon as the two were close enough to hear.

“You can't be here!  Demolition crew are ordered to stay at least one kilometer back from the inner perimeter!”

“Sorry!  We must had misjudged how close we were!  Our bad, we'll go back now!” Vegeta turned to me.  “Back up!” 

I hastened to so do, rolling the truck back out of view, then turning and driving around until we were in the shadow of the rubble mountain.

“What now?” I asked, feeling shaken.

“Well, we're not getting through  _ there _ .”

“We could go sideways until we find a point that isn't guarded.  What is the army  _ doing _ there?”

“Preparing to invade, is my guess.”

He looked as rattled as I felt.  Another surge of fear hit my stomach.  The government must have been preparing for this in advance of their announcement.  Of course they had! Announce just as rumor broke, to give themselves the maximum advantage of surprise - it made sense.

I kept driving, skirting the rubble pile we had just come past, then driving West, towards the Hudson again.  When we passed a gap between mounds that gave a view into the distance, I strained to see what was up there.

“There doesn’t seem to be much behind the fence at that point,” I said.  “Do you think we can sneak through?”

Vegeta’s face didn’t communicate confidence.  In fact, his expression was closer to dismay. “I can’t tell from here.  I’ll have to go closer on foot. Back the truck up out of sight.”

He opened the door and dropped out as soon as I had stopped the truck, and I hastened to turn the motor off and follow him.  I caught up to him, crouching low in the broken brick and dust of the rubble mound, stripping his hi-vis coveralls off and putting his gray coat back on.

“Stay here,” he told me, wiping handfuls of brick dust on his dark coat and pants.

“What if something goes wrong?  What if they spot you?”

“Be ready to run.”

Then he began moving, low to the ground, rounding the side of the pile.  The sun had clouded back over, and when he wasn’t moving he was hard to spot.  Finally he was out of sight, and I strained my ears and eyes for any clues as to what was happening.  As I waited and the minutes started to tick by, I regretted letting him go alone. Splitting up felt like a terrible idea.

At last I saw the shape of him coming back towards me, more rapidly.  I fell back further behind the mound, wondering if I needed to start the truck again for a quick getaway.  Vegeta rounded the curve, then stood upright and ran to me. The almost wild look on his face nearly undid me.

“What is it?  Is there a way through?”

He ran straight at me, and I put up my hands to stop him.  He grabbed me by both elbows, catching his breath for a moment.

“Yes, but…  This is dangerous, Bulma.  You understand that, right?”

For a second I thought my nerve would fail me, but then I nodded.  “Okay, then. How do we do it?”

“There are not many sentries and no tents in this stretch, but there is traffic moving East and West.  We could wait until it gets dark and then risk crossing the perimeter.”

“Uh, huh.”  A good portion of my brain had checked out, not believing my mouth was agreeing to something so dangerous.  “So much for getting there in time for lunch!”

Vegeta squeezed my elbows tighter.

“Bulma!”  Words appeared to fail him.  He hung his head for a moment before raising it again and fixing on me with a desperate intensity.  “Do you really think this is worth it? Risking your life for me like this?”

“Yes.  I do.”

“Why?  You barely know me!”

That was a good question.  “Because... I screwed up last time.  It was only because of me that you ended up back in the military’s hands.  It was my fault, because I was stupid enough to use my wristand.”

“I don’t blame you for that.”

“You don’t need to - I know who was to blame.”

He grimaced.  “It’s not your fault for trying to save people!  But if it works this time, do you really think I could be free?  Properly free, if we reach these people?”

“Yes!” I replied, surprised.  “I wouldn’t have tried to bring you here if I hadn’t thought so!  I thought that’s what you wanted. Vegeta, what’s wrong?” He looked in pain.  He slackened his grip, holding me loosely then.

“Tell me about Radishya.  What is she really like?”

“She’s...a really strong woman.  But why?” And why was he only just asking now?  Did things look so bad to him that even he was wondering if it was worth it?

“Do you think she would accept me?  A military attack dog?”

“Of course!  She wants all the Saiyans back.   _ Any  _ Saiyan.  You’re all, in some way, her children.”

He colored slightly and dropped his gaze.  “No matter what we’ve done?”

“I’m sure.”

“Then maybe you should go back.  I can go on alone. There’s no reason to risk you, too.”

The panic that had been nibbling away at me ever since we snuck out of Cornell broke free.

“Back to what?” I asked.  “I don’t have anything to go back to!  If I go back to Ithaca they’ll pick me up in minutes!  I was researching technology that would make the breeding of Saiyans unnecessary - make you all obsolete, but I can’t do that when I’m in some nameless detention cell!  Even if they don’t, I’ve missed my check-in with my parole officer… If I turn back, where am I going to go? My life is wrecked all over again. I’m just as much a fugitive as you are.”

“Fuck!”  He let go of me and wheeled around in a circle.

“I may as well stick with you until you find the Saiya family.  Maybe I can be of some use with them.”

He returned, and to my surprise, he took both my hands and stared into my eyes.  I wanted to look away - it was too intense, his face too close, it made me too aware that he was a man.  I could even feel his breath on my face, and at exactly the wrong moment, I recalled waking up next to him, pressed against him under the covers this morning.  Warmth spread over my cold cheeks.

“I’m sorry you gave that all up for me,” he said, sounding truly regretful.  “But we don’t have to go through with this. We can just turn away now - go into hiding together.  We don’t need to find the others. It could just be the two of us.”

I felt my blush deepen, fuelled by confusion and anger as much as the sentiment.  What was he saying? Giving up? And to go on the run and try to make some new life with just the two of us?  We weren’t much to each other. Until then I hadn’t thought he’d had any interest in me, but what he proposed sounded like a very desperate elopement.  Or was that just my own interpretation?

He stepped closer, speaking softly.

“If we go through that perimeter, there’s a chance that we both die,” he told me.  “I don’t want you dead.”

I squeezed his hands harder, finally feeling the full seriousness of the situation.  The fear crested and my certainty died. Where would we go? How could we manage it? I stared back at him, but his eyes flicked up to look at something over my shoulder.

He grabbed my wrist, forcing me behind him as he stepped forward.

“What?”

Something moved in the rubble of the facing mound.  Vegeta’s hands whipped behind him and drew out a handgun from the waistband of his pants, a gun I hadn’t even known existed, and aimed it at the slightly shifting patch of debris.

“Freeze!” shouted a voice - a young, scared sounding voice.  “You are violating an SSA Army controlled area! Lay down your weapons or I will use deadly force!”  The moving mouth gave it away - a soldier in heavy camouflage was perched several yards up the rubble with an assault rifle trained on us.

“Shit,” Vegeta muttered.  He pointed his gun up into the air, and the other he held out in front of him in a gesture to stop.  “We’re not going to shoot.” His outstretched hand flicked up, fingers pointing at the boy, and a fat crack of a spark leapt the distance and connected to the boy’s gun.   It happened too fast for a human to react - only a fraction of the speed of light, but more than fast enough. The kid convulsed, falling down the slope, but his finger tightened on the trigger of his weapon as he did, the rapid fire shots wild and ear-splittingly loud in the space between the rubble piles.  As the reverberation died away we heard a shout and wheeled around. I had just enough time to see the soldiers rushing in on foot before the bullets came.

Vegeta swivelled towards me, but before he could say anything I felt something hot graze my arm, tugging at my clothes.  He cried out, and fell on me, and I staggered, tumbling to the ground under his weight. We hit the dirt, him on top, muffling me when I screamed his name.  I heard the sounds of boots on the rubble, coming closer.

“They’re down, Sarge!  Got ‘em!”

...

I was in a cell made of a steel frame and chain link walls, floor and ceiling.  It was one of many in a row, in many rows that filled the largest marquee tent I had ever seen.  I had not guessed the purpose of these tents when I saw them before, but I could now - this was a temporary detention center intended for Bronx inhabitants.

I shivered uncontrollably, freezing, though maybe not as freezing as I was in a state of shock and anxiety.  I had stripped off my coveralls - not only did they have a ragged hole from a bullet in them, they were covered in Vegeta’s blood.  The touch of the wet cloth and the coppery smell had made me want to barf with fear for him. He wasn’t dead when I last saw him, dragged away, cuffed and staggering between two soldiers into the back of an armored personnel carrier before I was loaded into another.

“Don’t hurt her!” he’d shouted.

But who knew what had happened to him now?  My singular guard would tell me nothing.

So I crouched on the floor of the cell in a red wool dress, still dressed for my date two nights ago.

“Is this a new thing?” I asked the young soldier, who was trying hard to ignore everything I said.  “Execution by hypothermia?” My teeth chattered. I couldn’t even stand and walk around - the cage was only four feet tall.  My begging to be taken to use a latrine had been met with the provision of a small plastic bucket and a single sanitizing wipe.

An officer came and questioned me briefly.

“I’m Callum McAllister,” I insisted.  “An engineer hired by Croyden Construction, and we just got too close to the perimeter.”

“Interesting attire for a demolition job.”

Yeah, he had me there.  “Walk of shame,” I explained.  “Didn’t have time to get back to my room and change before I went on site.  Speaking of which, do you have some aspirin? I’m still hungover.”

“And what were you even doing so far from the demolition zone?”

“I finished my assessment and we were curious.  I thought it would be exciting if we could get close enough to see the front line.”

He obviously didn’t believe me, and who knew what Vegeta had said.  They may have even recognized what he was on sight, if they were familiar with Saiyans.

“If that were true, that’d make you and your friend a real pair of dumbasses,” he said.  “But I suppose there’s not much point in interrogating a Wilder spy now. Pretty soon you’re going to have a lot of company.”

Almost on cue, I heard a strange whooshing sound, and then a distant explosion.  It was followed by the rat-at-at of machine gun fire somewhere a long way away. The officer stood up  

“That’ll be the party starting,” he said as he left. 

At some point the guard changed.  The new guard brought a gray wool blanket and fed it through the gap between the wall and the door.  It was scratchy, but I wrapped myself in it gratefully. But what now?  _ What now? _

I wished that the guard would at least look away for a moment.  I looked around each corner and examined every link of my cell over the hours I spent there.  It would have been no problem for someone with a pair of wire cutters, but I didn’t even have a bobby pin. 

Lunchtime came and went without any appetite on my part, until, without warning, I felt sick with hunger and dizziness.

“Are you guys going to feed me, or do I have to pass out?” I said eventually.

“The prisoner is not being treated inhumanely,” the soldier pointed out, as if from a script.

“I think I’d be the best judge of that, don’t you?” I asked him.  “I haven’t eaten since before six this morning. What time is it now?”

He looked at his wristband before evidently deciding that he didn’t need to answer my questions.

“Fine.  Passing out it is.”

I didn’t believe I would actually pass out, but I did feel rotten.  After another quarter of an hour or so of patently ignoring each other, the guard wandered away down the rows of cells to the far end of the tent, muttering something into his headset.  Five minutes later another soldier came to the flap of the marquee with a paper cup and a foil wrapped blob. Together they went through the rigmarole of having me kneel in the corner of the cage with my hands above me while they unlocked the door and laid their offerings on the floor.  I considered rushing them, but that would be suicidal. They would see me coming, and one had his gun trained on me.

When the cage was locked again I discovered a cup of chicken noodle soup, and inside the foil wrapper, a plain baked potato.  Never had bland food tasted so good, and having something warm inside me made me feel like I might just survive the night. The blanket was not thick enough, and the chain links were cutting into my legs, back, and ass, so I wouldn’t sleep, but I would survive.

The light filtering through the roof and walls of the tent was getting dimmer and dimmer, leaving the job of illuminating the massive space to occasional floodlights on C-stands scattered about the edge of the tent.  Outside, the sound of sporadic gunfire and explosions grew more frequent. I head the thumping of many boots running past the tent outside, and sometimes a shouted order or excited greeting. Back in Ithaca, I had missed my parole check in by several hours, I guessed.

_ I beg the mercy of the court - I was unable to attend my parole meetings as I was being detained by the SSA Army for attempting to enter a controlled area. _

The guard received some sort of instruction over his helmet headset.  I could hear the buzz of a voice, but not the content. He cast a puzzled glance at me and then walked away, heading out of the other end of the tent.  Not believing my luck, I leapt on the cage door, tugging and pulling at it, then examined the hinges and closing mechanism. Both were solid and on the outside of the cage.  The closure was very simple, like a pool gate lock, but set twelve inches above the top of the cage, so that no finger could reach it. If I had a long stick...but I had no stick or anything stick-like.  I could reach through the links and touch the hinges with my fingers, but not enough to be able to so something useful, even if I had something to use to loosen them. I went through the coveralls and found nothing more useful than the plastic button on the breast pocket.

“Dammit!  Dammit!”

I started to give in to despair and weep, but then I saw something odd - the edge of the tent a little way away was lifting.  The plasticized fabric rippled as tent hooks were pulled free. Then a body wriggled in under the flap, grunting with effort. He wore military fatigues - the pants and thick, camo coat that all the soldiers were wearing, even a helmet, and I still knew him before he even turned towards me.

“Vegeta!”

He turned.  “Shh!” He pushed himself up from the ground with one hand, the other arm held stiffly to the side.

He ran quickly to my cell and released the door.

“How did you get free?” I whispered as I crawled out and tried to straighten.  “Are you okay?”

He grinned.  “Not really! They shot me through the arm and stitched me back up again, but they’ve got some good drugs in that infirmary tent, let me tell you.”

I looked at him in concern, and took his shoulders and gently turned him towards the nearest light.  I checked his eyes. Still Vegeta Tarble Two.

“Are you high?”

He tried to sober his smile.  “A little. But it’s wearing off fast.  Come on, let’s get out of here before that bozo comes back from his break.”  

He led me back to where he had torn up the tent pegs and we wormed our way outside.  We were in a narrow gap between the marquee and a smaller green tent. I dragged the blanket after me and wrapped it around my shoulders again.  Vegeta noticed and focused on me. 

“Get rid of that,” he said, already pulling the blanket away from me.  I shivered, about to object that I was freezing and my dress may as well be a red flag, but he shucked his heavy coat off, struggling a bit and gasping with pain. and dumped that on my shoulders instead.  It was way too large on me, but it covered the dress and went a long way to warding off the cold.

“How did you get this?” I whispered.

“Stole it from the guard in the infirmary unit.”  He looked pleased about it. “They didn’t realize what I was.  As soon as the sedatives wore off, I zapped the guard and stole his clothes.”

“They didn’t shackle you to the bed or anything?”

“Yeah, they did - but the restraints were made of plastic.  I melted my way through them.”

He looked me up and down, then twitched up the hood to cover my blue hair.  Under the coat he had been wearing a heavy camo shirt.

“Looks like you had time to steal the guy’s entire uniform!”

“Everyone else is busy.  They’re readying for a full scale attack - no one’s got time for prisoners.  Come on, follow me.”

“Wait, Vegeta!”  My whisper stopped him before he made it to the end of the passageway.  “Are you sure you’re fine to do this? Your arm...”

He looked down at it.  “Yeah, I’ll be fine. I don’t have much choice, anyway, do I?”

We slipped out onto the rough road that had been flattened into the dirt by vehicles driving up and down it.  Not many people were passing now. Instead I could see large musters of soldiers and vehicles ranged along the foot of the bank in either direction.  There were missile launchers and large caliber weapons on the top of the bank. As I watched, one shot a round off, lighting the deep twilight around it with an orange flash.  A moment later a boom sounded, and the distant sound of falling masonry followed. Then there was an explosion much closer, and the men on the top of the bank staggered back for a moment.  This wasn’t a one way thing - The Bronx was fighting back.

Vegeta led us, parallel to the bank, but yards away from those at its base, heading towards the Hudson River again.  We came to a stretch were there was no artillery or soldiers in sight.

“Let’s go see what we’re dealing with,” he suggested, and we scaled the rubble bank to peer over the top.  

We were on the edge of a war zone.  Before us was half a mile of forsaken landscape - decaying and destroyed buildings interspersed with leafless trees, half swallowed by snow.  Beyond that was an impressive stone wall built of reclaimed bricks and masonry. It had been smashed back down, almost to the ground, in a few places.  Beyond the wall, the tops of other buildings loomed, multi-story and high rises in far better repair than the buildings in front. Artillery shells were being fired at the wall and buildings, and fire was being returned from inside the walled city, in the form of flaming catapults and rockets.

I couldn’t believe that it was our goal to get  _ inside  _ that place.

We went back down and continued towards the river until the crushed brick dust and tumbled concrete ran into woodlands.  When trees hedged the cleared path, we veered off into them, running as fast as the undergrowth would let us. Brambles and ivy caught at my leggings, and at one point I tripped over something at ankle height, landing hard on my hands.  As Vegeta hauled me upright again I saw it was the rusted frame of a child’s swing set, on its side and sagging with corrosion. I looked around at the dark shapes I had assumed to be toppled trees and realized they were the broken backs of wooden houses, moldering into the loam.

“Where are we even going?” I asked Vegeta.  “Do you think they won’t have guarded the riverside?”

“We’ll see.”

We reached the bank at full dark, the land petering abruptly to sand and the slow moving water.  We turned South then, to where we could already see flood lights illuminating a large clearing on the bank.  A small flotilla of military-gray Zodiac motorboats was tied up to logs arranged along the shore, and they were guarded by two, bored looking soldiers.  We watched one of them kick a stone up and down the sandy bank, while the other awkwardly checked his wristband while still trying to keep a hand on his rifle.

“Amateurs,” muttered Vegeta.  “Stay here - this won’t take long.”

He walked out of our cover in the woods calmy, raised his hand and said, “Hoy!”

The two soldiers looked up.  Just kids again.

“Hey, who’re you?” one asked.  They hadn’t lifted their weapons, and seemed totally put at ease by Vegeta’s uniform.

“Sergeant Brown,” replied Vegeta.  “I need one of those boats.”

“Do you have permission from Captain Thilo?” he asked.

“I do.”

The boys looked at each other.  “No one mentioned anything about a boat needing to go out.”

Vegeta quickly raised both hands, and sparks shot from them, zapping both boys simultaneously.  I flinched, a cold wave of horror washing over me.

“Are they dead?’ I asked, coming out from the trees.

“No.  If I judged it right, they should be just unconscious.”  He went to the nearest one and rolled him over, unlooping the rifle’s strap and relieving him of his coat.

“Oh, jeez.”  For a moment my stomach hadn’t caught up with my brain, and I thought I was going to be sick.  “What about the one outside the perimeter?”

“He should be fine, too.  Go untie a boat.”

I ran to the nearest one and undid the slip knot with a single tug.  Vegeta pressed his fingers to the neck of the boy he was stooping over.  “This one’s got a pulse.” Then he moved to the other one to check him. “Damn.”

“He’s dead?”

“Not really.  His heart’s just not beating.”  Calmly, he took the boy’s weapon, then yanked up his layers of coat, sweater, and shirt, then placed his fingers carefully on his chest.  The soldier’s body convulsed once, then twice, and then his head came up reflexively with a moan.

“Stay down,” said Vegeta, rolling him onto his side.  “You’re all right.” He turned and then ran to join me.  I was just staring at him in shock and amazement. “Get in!”

I shook myself out of the daze and hauled the boat in closer to shore.  Even so, I had to wade into the icy water to get on board. Water flooded my snow boots, so cold it took my breath away.  Vegeta leapt in after me, pushing the boat back into deeper water with his momentum. We drifted out slowly, feeling totally exposed on the lit up portion of river while Vegeta put the electric outboard motor in the water.  It came to life, churning the water at its slowest speed, but its whine, and the gushing of the water still sounded alarmingly loud. Vegeta backed the boat out of the makeshift mooring and pointed it out into the river. We chugged along at low speed until we were out of the radius of the light, then Vegeta killed the motor, letting the current take us.

It was quiet on the river, except for the lapping of the water on the metal of the hull.  My heart was slowing again, but my ears strained so hard for any sound in the dark that when a loon called across the river, I started, and my foot knocked something in the base of the boat.  Reaching down, I felt around, and then slid the end of the thing up onto the seat next to me.

“Vegeta,” I whispered.  “There are oars!”

“What?”

He left the stern of the boat, coming to the middle, sitting next to me to confirm my find.

“Oh, god, we’re idiots!” he whispered.

We laughed, trying to stifle the sound, but my laughter had a little edge of hysteria.  I tried to repress it by holding my breath.

“Are you alright?” he whispered.

“Other than being fucking freezing?” I answered, and started to shake with laughter again.

He put his good arm around me and gave me a squeeze.  “Hold it together, Briefs. Other than that?”

I took a deep breath.  “No. Not really.”

“Cold feet?”

“They’re fucking icicles!”

We both started laughing again, but it was a weak, weird laughter that was so much relief that it reeked of fear.

“I meant the other kind of cold feet,” he murmured.  “We don’t have to go into the Wilderness. Neither of us are dumb enough to think that running into an unknown area right before it’s going to get invaded is a good idea.  We could turn around; go upstream or across the river.”

Perhaps I  _ was  _ dumb enough, because I asked, “But then how will we ever find Radishya and the family?  This could be our only chance.”

“Is it worth it though?  I don’t even understand what’s in it for you.”

I took another breath, and another, feeling the threatening hysteria retreat as I considered his question.  I felt very strongly that uniting Vegeta with his family was something I needed to do. Was that my own sense of responsibility and guilt?  Or was it that I really desired it for him?

“I want you to have some kind of normal life,” I told him.  “To have family and freedom, as much as you can. I want all the Saiyans to have that.  Everyone should have that. It’s what you deserve.”

Vegeta snorted.  “Is it?”

I frowned.  “You came to me for help, Vegeta.  Why does it sound like you’re trying to talk me out of it now?  Do you want to give up?”

Vegeta didn’t answer.  We sat in silence for a minute before he spoke.  “If we drift far enough downstream and land well back from the frontline, hopefully it will be less dangerous for a time until the defenses are breached.  We could go in, see what we can discover in that short time, then leave on the boat again.”

“Okay, then.  A p-plan.”

I shivered, and he squeezed me against him more firmly.  I practically collapsed in his lap, wanting to hide from the chill breeze and the danger of the world, but knowing that wasn’t fair on him.

“You’re not getting hypothermia are you?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” I told him, teeth chattering again.  “I think it’s mostly just a case of intense anxiety.” I chuckled, but Vegeta wasn’t amused.

“Fuck, this is insane!  I don’t deserve this amount of loyalty from you.  What did I ever do for you? Other than wreck your life?”

“It was m-my choice.  The least I could do, all things considered.  And b-buddy, don’t think for a minute that I’m only on this trip for you!  Those Special Reconnaissance goons showing up kinda wrecked my chance of a normal, productive life, and I’ve already tried a meaningless life of exile - let me tell you,  it  _ sucked _ .  Finding Radishya is maybe my only chance now of a purposeful life.  I might be able to help them, if I get to them. If I don’t...I have no idea what I’ll do.  I’ll be a fugitive, and useless to them, to you, or to anyone!”

“Jeez,” he said, rocking me slightly.  “I take it back -  _ you’re  _ insane.  Where’d you get off being so noble, huh?  Most people would be content to just be as smart as you are, or as pretty.  Fucking over-achiever.”

I laughed.

“And brave,” he added.  “Did I mention that? I don’t deserve it.”

It hurt my heart to hear him speak that way.  “I think you’re wrong. I think it’s the only thing in your life so far that you deserved.  There’s nothing you could have done to make you deserve the life you did get!”

“Is that why you saved me the first time?”

“I guess.  I couldn’t stand seeing you caged.  Seeing you kept ignorant and going out of your mind with boredom and isolation.  If our economy and our national defenses depend upon humans being treated that way, maybe we shouldn’t have them!  How can anyone do that to a kid for any reason?”

“Maybe it’s worth it,” he said.  “Maybe the sacrifice of a few hundred or thousand lives is worth it to save millions?”

I straightened then, disturbed to hear him thinking of himself and his kind in that way.

“Do you think spending your entire life in captivity so far has been worth it?  Is that why you escaped? Because your sacrifice is  _ worth  _ it?”

“I don’t know anymore!”

The distress in his voice alarmed me.  Vegeta was not certain about the path ahead - he seemed to be in some sort of crisis with his talk of being not worth it. 

“Vegeta,” I said more calmly.  “Illuminary Inc and the military would tell you your sacrifice is worth it.  That’s their thinking in your mind. Everything is justified to them.”

“If it was down to a choice of my life or the survival of the SSA, which would you choose?”

The question dumbfounded me, and I had no idea how to answer.  This was all getting a bit intense. He was still holding me to him with his good arm, but I slowly took his free hand from where it lay in his lap, and held it between my own.  As cold as I was, his hand was freezing to my touch.

“Their problem is that  _ they  _ think there is only one way to do it,” I told him.  “I want to find another way. I want to  _ make  _ another way.”

“You’re unbelievable.”  He lowered his forehead to mine, resting it there.  At first I thought it was an expression of affection or despair or maybe just exhaustion.  And maybe it was. But as the moment passed… As the moments passed I became aware of his every breath. That we were huddled together, our hands held tightly.

My heart swelled with yearning that I couldn’t deny to myself anymore.  My feelings for him had grown so strong, so fast, and could it be that he felt the same?  All his talk of running, just the two of us, maybe he did, and it made me want to throw my lot in with him, even if I wasn’t sure he was the kind of man I should be running away with.  Even if he was the boy I was accused of debauching - it was very dark, and there was no one at all to see. And no one but me could know the way my heart was racing.

I raised my lips to his a fraction of an inch before stopping myself, deciding better of it, but it was enough of an opening for Vegeta, who closed the distance between our lips himself.  I could have jumped for joy, for shock, for dismay! But instead I froze, just sitting there with his lips on mine. I trembled on the edge of giving in, my heart racing, all thoughts of the cold, the dark, and the danger forgotten for a moment.  It wasn’t until he started to pull away that I made the leap. I wanted him. I wanted this. And I wanted to block out the world with his kiss.

I leaned into him, pressing back into his kiss, and my leg knocked the oar from the bench.  The clatter as it hit the metal of the hull rang across the river. We both laughed at the surprise it gave us, but gasped the next second - a harsh white light hit us from behind.  We jerked apart, reeling in the shattering of the moment as we turned to face the blinding spotlight.

“Who goes?” asked a voice over a megaphone.

Before any thought of answering came to me, a whoosh from behind became a rocket passing overhead, and it slammed into the source of the spotlight, bursting into a fireball.  For a few short seconds the scene was illuminated in a warm, orange glow of destruction. A navy launch rocked in the water behind us, its guns trained on us, but its hull smashed.  It was one in a line of launches anchored across the river. We had drifted right between their ranks in the dark.

The spotlight was extinguished, the fireball dimmed, and everything dropped into darkness again, but not silence.  There were screams and shouts across the water, and downriver, we heard a motor start up. Throwing himself into the stern, Vegeta grabbed the rudder of the outboard and gunned the motor, following the sound of the other boat as it shot away from the rocket attack it had launched.  I deduced his reasoning - if they had attacked the navy launch, they must be Wilders.

Up ahead, a great glow was coming from a side arm of the river.  The boat we were chasing turned into it. I guessed this was the Harlem River, that formed the lower East boundary of the Bronx Wilderness area.  I looked back at Vegeta and saw the lights of the other navy boats searching after us, the rumbling sounds of larger motors added to the whine of the motorboats’.

“They’re following!” I warned Vegeta.  His face was set in a mask of grimness.

As we came around the bend into the Harlem, we saw the way ahead blocked.  From each bank of the river a huge weir of rubble blocked the way, except for a narrow gap in the middle, and the whole basin was lit up like Christmas by floodlights  The other boat passed through the gap, and Vegeta was lining us up us to pass though, too, when gunshots sounded from up ahead. Both of us dropped to the floor of the boat instinctively, and I heard the sound of bullets hitting the water next to us.

“Stop!” I screamed.  “We’re friends! We’re friends!”

The gunshots did stop, but we stayed in the bottom of the boat.  I looked over at Vegeta, not reassured that he looked almost as scared as I felt.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yes.  Are you?”

He nodded.

The idling boat coasted us around in a wide arc until we fetched up against the weir.  When we stuck our heads up out of the boat, it was to see a group of people, silhouetted by the glow of blue-white floodlights.  They had weapons. They were pointing them at us.

I put my hands up.  “Please! We’re friends!  We’re unarmed!”

Vegeta immediately contradicted me by removing two handguns from the bulk of his coat and tossing them to the feet of the person in point position, before raising his hands.

“I see,” said the man.  “ _ Unarmed _ .”

“I’ve got two assault rifles in the bottom of the boat, too,” said Vegeta.  “But you’ll notice I am not pointing them at you.”

“Okay, I thought we were unarmed, but now we really are,” I corrected.

“So, you’re our  _ friends? _ ” he said.  “Who are you?  Why is some military-looking duo blasting in here claiming to be friends in the middle of a fucking war?”

“We might look military, but we’re not,” I explained.  I took off my camo overcoat to reveal my much-abused red dress and fleece tights.  

“Right.  You going to a party out here,” the man joked to the amusement of the rest.  “Can I see your invite?”

“I didn’t get to choose my wardrobe before all hell broke loose!  I’m not military.”

“You could be a spy.”

“We’d be fairly poor spys, riding in here on an army motorboat dressed in uniform, wouldn’t we?” Vegeta pointed out.

“Well, what about you?  You got a cocktail dress on under there?”

“No.”

“You  _ look  _ military.  You got that stick-up-ass look to you.”

Vegeta looked like he was holding back some choice words.  “I was, once upon a time.”

“Or you could still be.”

“Look, we just escaped from the encampment upriver,” I interjected, trying to head off the argument that appeared to be brewing between the two.  “We were trying to get through to you, and discovered that there’s a highly inconvenient invasion being staged. We were captured and my friend was injured, but we escaped.”

“Show us your injury then.”

Vegeta scowled, but began taking his coat off anyway.  Then he stripped off the heavy shirt underneath with some difficulty, and grunts of pain, then a thin woollen sweater.  I took the chance to look around the group quickly. There were both males and females, with a variety of skin tones from white to black, but all adult.  They wore wool and padded coats in dull colors, and even some fur. They were mismatched, but had a certain alikeness to their clothing. The man in the front, the presumed leader, was growing impatient with the slowness of Vegeta’s disrobing.  Vegeta was down to just a thin base layer, and the bulk of the dressing underneath could be seen, and an authentic looking stain of blood starting to show through. Just as Vegeta lifted the front of his shirt to pull it over his head, the man said,  “Stop! I don’t want to be here all night - I believe you.”

“Naw, don’t stop,” called a woman from the back of the group, “I was enjoying the show!”  The women of the group laughed, and I was annoyed to think that they had admired that glimpse of Vegeta’s finely sculpted abdomen like I had.

“Come on, get out of the boat now,” said their leader.  “But don’t try nuthin. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what will happen.”

Some weapons remained trained on us, but other hands reach down to help me up out of the boat.  After he finished dressing again, Vegeta was helped up, too, gasping at using his arm. We were both patted down, presumably for more weapons.

“So, ‘friends,’ what are you here for?” asked the woman who was frisking me.

“To find Radishya and the rest of the free Saiyans.”

She groaned, and several people tutted.

“What?” I asked.

“Don’t you think we’ve got enough on our plate right now?” the woman asked.  “I don’t think any of us has time to track down some random mutants for you.”

“This guy’s a Saiyan,” said a man from the back.  “Ain’t ya?”

The man patting him down jumped away, almost falling over himself in alarm.

“I thought you said you weren’t armed?” he accused us.

“I can hardly disarm  _ myself _ ,” replied Vegeta.

The woman exchanged a look with the one I had thought at first to be the leader, and they withdrew to confer.

“Why’re you looking for Radishya and them?” asked the man who had identified Vegeta as a Saiyan.  “What makes you think they’re here?”

“We don’t,” said Vegeta.  “But this is the only lead we had.  I want to join the family.”

“Ah.”

The leadership couple returned.

“You’re a deserter, right?” the woman asked Vegeta.

“Yes.”

She nodded at the man who had just been questioning us.  “You can go take them to Chief Pelham and the Mayor. This guy could be useful, and if not, they’ll know what to do with them.”

“Sure thing, Grace.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might not post two chapters today - I might not have time. The great Christmas Time Crunch is upon me, with house painting competing with Christmas pudding making and present wrapping jockeying for my time.


	12. The Bronx - 2144

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At the last minute I divided this chapter into two as it was kind of long and did have a natural segue in the middle, so you will be getting two chapters today!

**CHAPTER TWELVE: THE BRONX 2144**

 

An electric buggy waited at the end of the weir, and we squeezed into the backseat behind our guide.  He drove us up a darkened street. There were still some original buildings here, though some of them looked unsafe to enter.  I remembered my geiger counter and my paranoia over radiation exposure when I first went to LA. My younger self would not be happy with this situation at all.

The buildings soon gave way to woodland, and then open farmland.  The headlights of the buggy swept over occasional brick piles, pre-war buildings, and smaller, free standing homes.  Then we passed another built up area, with intact streets, and some of the buildings looked occupied, but orchards grew down the avenues.  We passed a crumbling grand townhouse from which the sound of bleating goats came. Then we were back into open farmland, startling sleeping cows.

Up ahead, an artificial dawn was glowing on the Northern horizon - the lights of the military invasion on the other side of the wall making a soft glow in the thin mist, silhouetting the ancient high- and mid-rise buildings we were racing towards.

“Are we going into that old part of the city?” I asked.

“To the Bones?  Yeah. That’s where the Mayor is right now.”  Then an orange burst lit up a section of old buildings and the explosion caused part of the skyline to collapse.  “Oh, jeez!” he exclaimed.

_ Oh, jeez, _ indeed.

We saw no one on the way.

“Where is everyone?” Vegeta asked.  “Are they in hiding?”

“No, they’re mostly gone already.  The ones that are left are either up ahead on the wall or defending the coastline.”

In the distance a weird sort of whine started up, and then from all around us it was answered in weird, disharmonic, mournful howls that set the hair on the back of my neck rising in primordial dread.

“Do you have wolves out here?” I asked, sure I was mistaken.

“Eh.  Not exactly, but close enough,” was the not very reassuring reply.  “But don’t worry - they won’t attack unless they’re told to.”

The last houses we passed on the edge of the fields were small squat cottages built of reclaimed brick and dotted about haphazardly, a metalled road winding between them.  They had an off kilter quality to them. I guessed they were built by hand sometime after the war. The buggy’s headlights illuminated gardens, vegetable patches, and kids’ bikes laying abandoned as we passed through, heading into the city.  

Our driver pulled up outside a building that rose higher than those around it - maybe seven stories.  It was in good repair, and festooned with satellite dishes and antennas. Finally we saw evidence of more Bronx occupants.  A few rushed down the street, shouting to each other in a very serious manner. Vegeta and I started towards the entrance of the building, but our guide called out, “Yo, this way!”

He led us a short distance across the street to an old shop, fronted with glass windows and softly lit from within.  My first thought was that it was a furniture store, as it was full of desks, chairs, drawers and even some sofas, but it was also full of people frantically working on said furniture.  We stepped inside and were surrounded by the buzz of people frantically taking calls on wristbands, headsets, handsets, and using display screens and portable workstations. The light came from their displays and small battery powered lamps.

“What’s the sit rep from the marsh?” a man called out across the room.

“No activity yet.  They can see lights out there, but they’re not coming in.  Those launches have too deep a draught to get close.”

“Tell them not to get complacent.  Pelham expects they might use dinghies to stealthily land small numbers of troops.”

I realized that what it really was, was a war office.  I found myself realigning my expectations for this “Wilderness”.  I was sure the control center on the other side of the barricade was not dissimilar.

Before a wall panel showing satellite footage of the perimeter outside, a group of people were talking in urgent voices.  Between them and us was a tired looking young Asian woman sitting at a desk.

“Hey, I got some people that just arrived on the Harlem River,” our guide explained.  “Grace says they need to meet the Mayor.”

The woman gave us a quick up and down.  “You’ll have to wait. They’re in the middle of something.”

People began to peel off the group ahead of us, one woman in particular was giving most of the orders.  She was black, and her natural-dyed coat and leggings were enhanced by a very “Wilderness” looking wolfskin piled across her shoulders, giving her an imposing silhouette.  The Mayor, I presumed. When the others had all dispersed, she walked our way.

“What are two SSA soldiers doing in my command center?” she asked our guide.

“They’re not SSA,” he said, defensively.  “Or they say so, anyway.” He suddenly didn’t look so sure.

“So you brought them  _ here? _ ”

The guy looked a little sheepish.  “Well, Grace and Darryl down at the pool told me to.  This one’s a Saiyan, he says.”

The Mayor came closer to Vegeta, scrutinizing his face.  She was taller than him. Up close I could see the lines of her face and under her hazel eyes.  She must have been somewhere in the region of fifty, but she was still striking looking - in an imposing sort of way.  She flicked a brow. 

“I suppose he is, though that means nothing when there are far more of them on the government’s side than ours.  What are you doing here?” she asked him directly.

“We came looking for the Saiya family - for Radishya,” Vegeta explained.  “I escaped from the military months ago.”

She heaved a sigh.  “I don’t have time for this.  Chichi, get Pelham in here.”

I waited for the young woman to consult a wristband at least, but she appeared to do nothing at all, just staring into space.  Was she texting using a neural net?

The Mayor stared at us both, but particularly Vegeta. She had a hand on her hip, buried in the folds of her coat and wolfskin.  I had the sudden intuition that she had a gun under there. 

“And you?” she asked me suddenly.  “Who are you, and why are you here?”

“My name is Bulma Briefs, and I’m helping him find them.  I’m a friend of the Saiya family. Are you the Mayor?”

“Yes, Mayor Aaliyah.  Why didn’t you just take him straight to the family, if you’re a friend?” she asked without missing a beat.

I took a deep breath and explained about the email from Radishya about the compromise, and the woman blinked and minutely relaxed.  She must have known about that, too.

A new man came into the office - very tall.  For a shocked second I thought it was Bardock - he was maybe slightly older than Bardock was when the last time I saw him, but he was even taller and broader, with a deep V to his hairline.  Next to me, Vegeta sucked in a breath, too. The guy was a Saiyan though, and I guessed that Vegeta recognized this model, whatever he was. His hair was mad - a massive mane that had gone wild down his back and over the wolfskin pelt he also wore.  I wondered if the wolfskin was some mark of office.

Vegeta took my hand and squeezed it tightly.  I shot him a look and saw his face full of tension.  The returning glance he gave me was troubled. I was instantly back on guard.

“Ah!  A Vegeta, I see,” the man said, swaggering across the room.

“Ah, a damn fool Raditz, I see,” Vegeta replied.  I’d never heard of a Raditz.

The man grinned, folding his arms as he stopped a short distance from us.  “And there’s that honeyed-tongue that the Vegeta’s are so known for. I’m thinking classic line.”

“Tarble line,” Vegeta corrected him.  “Tarble Two.”

This gave “Raditz” a moment’s pause.  “I’m not sure I’ve ever met a Tarble.”

“Pelham, deal with this,” the Mayor ordered him.  “Get their story and do whatever you think is right.”

“What can I tell them?”

“Tell them anything; they’re not leaving The Bronx again, except with us.”

“Sure thing, Aaliyah.”

He led us to the back of the shop, to the open door of an office.  As we followed, Vegeta bent over to whisper in my ear.

“Don’t trust this guy - he’s probably military.”

“So were you,” I replied softly.

“But the Radditz hybrids were only bred for the military.  They were never generators.”

That was news to me.  The military had also been breeding Saiyans directly?

The office had been been cleared out and furnished with a few wooden chairs upholstered with lumpy cushions made of loom-woven fabric.  An ancient whiteboard was attached to the wall with corroded screws, its bubbled and rust-streaked surface still covered in hand drawn tables about carpet stock.

Raditz took a chair, looking too large for it.

“Okay, spill the story.”

Vegeta told him a brief version of his last few months - the escape, his companion going missing, finding me, someone he thought might still be in contact with the Saiyans, and our fraught journey here. 

“And how does he know you?” he asked me.

“My best friend was a half-Saiyan, who I think was abducted by either Illuminary Inc or the Weapons Research Unit,” I said.  “I came to know his father, and then I got a job at Illuminary Inc, trying to infiltrate the system.”

“Well.  Isn’t that a bold move?  How did that go?”

“Not well.  It only lasted long enough for me to help this guy escape the first time.  Then I was done, as far as Illuminary Inc.” Pelham’s eyes kept straying over to rest suspiciously on Vegeta, and I started to feel like the distrust was mutual.

“The first time?”

I nodded..

“When I was fourteen,” said Vegeta.  “It didn’t stick.”

Pelham frowned, focusing on Vegeta and then me.

“You broke him out of a generator?”

“Yes, an aircraft carrier.”

He laughed.  “Hell! That’s a ballsy act!  Wow, I’d like to hear the long version of that story sometime!  No time for that tonight, though. I suppose I can tell you that Radishya was here with the family only a week ago.  That was when they realized they’d been located, so they left. It was already clear that the military was planning some movement against The Bronx in general.”  He shrugged. “They were in the the first wave of evacuees.”

“Why didn’t you leave with them?” Vegeta asked.

“Well, I was here long before they were.  And I’ll stay to the bitter end, fighting the rearguard.  It’s kind of what is expected of a Chief, right?” He grinned, like it was a very light thing.  “I married a Bronx woman. I feel more at home amongst the Bronx people now than I do with the Saiya family. And I owe the people of Pelham Park a lot.”

Vegeta sat back in his chair, relaxing a little.

“Have we met?” Pelham asked him.

“What’s your real name?” Vegeta asked in reply.

“You mean my designated ‘slave code’?  My  _ product line _ and batch number?”

“I guess.”

“Kakarott Raditz Fifteen.  Formerly of Red Squadron.”

“Did you pick Pelham as your new name?” I asked.

“No.  But that’s what they tend to call me now that I’m the Chief of Pelham Park.”  Pelham grinned, proud of this. “I don’t mind it at all - I prefer it to Raditz.  But my friends still call me Raddy.”

“How long did you say you’ve been here?” Vegeta asked.

“Ten years, more or less.”

“We’re not likely to have met then.  That was about the time they transferred me from Illuminary Inc to Weapons Research.”

“Ah, a used battery!”

Vegeta snorted but then glowered at Raditz.  “I’d rather be that than a zealot like the electric cadets!”

“Ex-zealot, thank you.  Anyway, I was joking. We both ran away - obviously we are alike in other ways.”

Vegeta appeared to relax further, sitting back and propping one ankle of his knee.  “How did  _ you  _ end up here?”

Pelham took a deep breath.  “I was sent with my unit to eliminate a cell of anti-government terrorists in Toronto.  Things went a bit sideways, and I got seperated from my unit. I was keeping a low profile, making my way to the nearest base like they taught us, and living free for the first time in my life.  And I met people during that journey who didn’t think the same way that I’d been raised to think. They weren’t degenerates, or EE sympathizers; they were good people. And...I found that if I looked at things the way I’d been taught to, I could see the world that way - that the peace is a fragile thing, and I was an instrument of that peace, operating in secrecy because the enemy was all around us and within.  But if I looked at it the way my new friends saw it… I was a slave working for a government that mostly just wants to preserve itself. I was a tool that helped suppress change, and the enemy within was not my enemy, but the enemy of those who wielded me.”

Vegeta looked slightly stunned.  “Sounds like you spent a lot of time thinking about it.”

“I did.  And once my eyes were open I tried pretty hard to close them again with booze, but in the end I decided I couldn’t go back.  I’m just thankful that I met someone who was able to put me on the path to The Bronx Wilderness, or else I’d probably just have been scraped up off the floor of a bar in Niagara Falls by the military police.”  He flashed a grin. “It was a hell of an adjustment. Of course, it turns out I still have to operate in secrecy, but only  _ outside  _ The Bronx.”

“Did you know Bardock?” I asked.  Going by what he’d said, their time at the WRU must have overlapped.

“Which one?”

“The one that got away.  About eleven years ago.”

“Oh.  That guy.  They caught up to him and killed him somewhere in Canada.”  My heart froze.

“No, they didn’t,” Vegeta contradicted him.  “He  _ did  _ get away.”  And I could breathe again.  “He was the one that helped me get free this time.”

“Really?  Well, that’s what they told us, anyway,” said Pelham.. “Told us he defected and was killed on the run.  Tried to make an example of him.”

“They would probably rather lie about that than tell the truth to the troops,” I guessed.  “They wouldn’t want word to get around that escape is possible.” I yawned. I hoped this interview was going to end soon.  “What now? How do we catch up with Radishya?”

“You don’t.  You stick with us and we’ll take you to them, assuming we all survive the next day or two.”

I didn’t like that idea at all, and apparently neither did Vegeta.  

“Why not tell us where they are so we can go right now?”

Pelham laughed.  “Dude! You came here in the middle of a war, so you get to share the same fate as us, now!  How do you think you’re going to get off the peninsula? The army has the Northern border, the East side of the Hudson is lined with more troops, Manhattan is occupied, the south bank of the East River is occupied, we’ve got rocket launchers on fucking dinghys defending the Harlem River, and the only thing defending Pelham Park is sea mines and salt marsh!  You have no hope of getting out of here, and frankly I’m surprised you got in.”

“Fuck,” Vegeta muttered.  “It sounds like if we stay we’re going to be killed anyway.”

“No - we’ve got our escape route planned, but there’s no way I’m sharing it with a couple of strangers before it’s time to use it!” 

Vegeta and I exchanged a long look.  If anyone had asked, I wouldn’t have been able to deny I was scared.

“I don't want you staying here,” he said.  “It's dangerous.”

“It sounds like it's dangerous no matter what.”

“And you have no choice,” Pelham reminded us.  

“Well, that's that, then,” I said. “What can we do to help?  Are there any...I don't know, battlements you need defended?”

Pelham laughed, but Vegeta was not amused. 

“No, Bulma!”  

“Why not?  We've come here at the worst possible time for these people, and I think we should help out.”

“You're exhausted, you're tiny, and you have no weapons or combat training, do you?”  he pointed out. 

“No.  But I'm sure I could do  _ something _ .”

“Don't worry,” said Pelham.  “We've got two thousand defenders who've been prepping for this fight for years - we won't miss you.”  Then he said to Vegeta. “Another military-trained Saiyan could be useful though.”

Vegeta sat in silence with his arms crossed for a long moment, his face communicating all kinds of unpleasant thought.

“I only left the military a few months ago,” he said eventually, looking like the words tasted awful.  “There are bound to be some of my brothers in arms out there. I don't know if you've forgotten, but most soldiers think they're doing the right thing.  They're not evil. And I won't fight them unless I have to.” I felt a glow inside at those words. Vegeta may be rude and violent sometimes, but he had a compassionate heart under it all.  I felt proud of him, that no matter what they’d done to him, they hadn’t broken his humanity.

“You realize that your brothers in arms are probably spitting on your name and calling you a traitor right now?” Pelham pointed out.  “I don't think they'll hesitate to kill  _ you _ .”

“Perhaps.  But even that's not truly their fault.  I'd rather stay behind and make sure my- make sure Bulma stays safe.”

“Huh.  I guess I understand that,” Pelham agreed.  “Now what am I going to do with you?”

Vegeta's stomach gave a long, low gurgle, which made Pelham laugh.

“Classic!  Let me show you were we're serving some hot meals down the road.  After that a bed for the night shouldn't be hard to find.”

...

Walking down the uninhabited streets of the old Bronx I started to realize that the built up areas and mounds of rubble were preserved as more of a physical wall to hide the true settlement at the heart of The Bronx.  The military was busy knocking the place down, but there was no evidence that it held any value to these people. The houses, animals and farmland towards the center were the real Bronx.

Pelham assigned a teenaged boy to show us the way to the commissary - a kitchen set up in an old restaurant.  When we got there I was astounded by the amount of food they were serving. A woman loaded earthenware bowls for us, full of bean and bacon casserole and roast beef.

“I don’t need that much!” I objected.

“May as well eat as much as you can,” she said.  “I’m pretty sure this is the last night we’ll be serving from this kitchen, and we can’t take all the food with us when we go!”

We took a table, our minder also taking the chance to eat another meal beside us.

“What the…?” said Vegeta, suddenly, sitting straighter and looking at something behind me.  I turned and almost yelped. An enormous dog - no, actually, I will revise that - a wolf padded into the commissary and strolled up to the bench that the woman was serving from.

“What’ll it be?” she asked, just as she had for us, the humans.  The wolf strolled the counter, then pointed to the roast beef and the apple crumble with his nose.

“I might’ve guessed,” she said, and loaded a bowl.  The wolf carefully took the bowl between its teeth and carried it to the corner, where it began to inhale the food in just the manner you would expect.

“The dogs are pretty well trained around here,” I said.

Our young minder looked horrified.  “Don’t let them hear you call them D-O-G-S!  They don’t like it.”

I wondered who “they” was.  “Wolves, then?”

“Yeah, that’s okay.  But if you want to be respectful, call them Wolfkin.”

“You take your pets really seriously here,” I observed.

The boy’s eyebrows shot up.  “They are not  _ pets! _ ”

The wolf, now finished licking its bowl clean, picked it up and returned it to the bench.  The woman took it.

“What did you think?” she asked.

It gave a short, high bark, and wagged its tail.

“Always nice to have a fan,” she said, and the wolf turned and loped back out into the night.  I looked at Vegeta, not sure what I had just seen. He looked equally confused.

I ate all my dinner, and desert, too.  The day had taken everything out of me, and somehow even the regular explosions happening not far away couldn’t stop me from pigging out.  Afterwards our minder walked us out of the old urban area and back into the farmland fringes to a small, brick cottage. The door was unlocked, and inside it was cold and dark.  The boy tried the light switch, but nothing happened.

“The hydro generators were taken out by airstrikes yesterday,” he said.  “We’re down to solar power and the big capacitors in the Bones, but not many buildings are run off them.  Mostly just the ones actually in the Bones.”

“What are the Bones?”

“Where you just came from.  The old Bones of The Bronx.”

He went through the house looking in drawers and cupboards by the light of his electric lantern until he turned up two beeswax candles and a lighter.

“Feel free to help yourself to any food or clothing you find here.”

“Won’t the owners need them?” I asked.

“The owners have evacuated, and I doubt they’ll ever be coming back.”

He lit a candle and handed it to me before bidding us goodnight.

Vegeta took the other candle and lit it from mine.  We looked around the kitchen and stuck our heads in the next room; a tiny cramped bathroom.  A pre-war antique enamel bathtub with a rather rustic looking shower head over it took up most of the space.  Vegeta ran the hot water faucet in the sink.

“Are you wondering if it’s still warm?”

He nodded, holding his fingers under the flow.  “And it is.” He grinned and planted his candle in a glass on the windowsill, then took off his coat, then started to remove the rest of his layers.

“Are you going to have a shower?”

“Are you going to watch?”

“Jeez, of course not!” I said, laughing, and left him to it.

I investigated the rest of the house.  It was not big, and all the rooms were small.  The ceiling was so low I could reach up and touch it - it was not built for the likes of Pelham, that was for sure.  There was only one bedroom. I rifled the wooden drawers and wardrobe for clothes and found a woolen pinafore dress, a linen shirt, and a pair of pants.  They were all in the soft colors of vegetable dyes, and I would most likely look like a ragdoll in them, but a change of clothes was long overdue.

I heard Vegeta get out of the shower and waited patiently for him to exit the bathroom.  When he did, he was holding his bundled clothes and wearing only a towel. In the tiny hallway I couldn’t avoid the smell of his damp, clean skin, or quite ignore my reaction to it.  Wordlessly, he took the candle from my hand, leaving me the one in the bathroom.

I showered by candlelight.  The heat of the shower began as the most intense delight.  My toes, my fingers, my whole body, stiff with cold, came loose, and feeling clean, I began to feel more hopeful, too.  Get out of The Bronx alive - that wasn’t too hard of a challenge, was it?

Then the hot water began to run out.  By the time I’d washed the soap off me I was shivering again.  I dried myself hurriedly on a stanger’s towel and shoved myself into her clothes, sans underwear.  I had washed and wrung out my bra and panties and hoped they would dry overnight. 

I walked the candle carefully back to the living room, feeling bad about dripping wax on the floor, before realizing it really didn’t matter.  Vegeta had built a fire in the hearth, and the room was full of the smell of sizzling sap and the flickering light of flames. It made me think of campfires.  If it weren’t for the war zone outside, this would have been a lovely little quaint adventure. 

I discreetly laid out my wet bra and panties on the fireguard.  Vegeta was sitting on the single, short sofa, naked from the waist up, removing the dressing from his arm.  The blood had soaked through, and spread across the whole thing after getting wet in the shower.

“Oh!”

I had forgotten all about his injury.  He must have been in pain all this time, and in conditions like this, infection was a very real possibility.

“I need to change the dressing, I think,” he said.  I saw that he’d gotten some clean bandages from somewhere, and some fresh gauze pads that looked brand new and still in their sterile packaging.

“Can I help you?” I asked, coming to sit next to him on the sofa.  Damn, that was a hard sofa. It had a wooden frame and seat, and the cushions felt like they were stuffed with a combination of wool and straw.

“Hmm,” he said.  “Do you know how to dress a wound?”

“I’ve done first aid in the past.  You tell me if I’m getting it wrong.”

He held out his arm and I finished unwinding the old dressing and peeled back the gauze pads, sodden with diluted blood.  The bullet had passed through the side of his arm, but not deeply enough for there to be a separate entry and exit wound. It must have grazed the bicep and brachialis - a line of thick stitches closed up the wound, surrounded by skin that looked puffy, red, and bruised.  It made me feel faintly woozy to look at, but mostly from imagining how it felt for Vegeta. He took the old bandages and threw them in the fire where they almost smothered the flames.

“Does it hurt a lot?” I asked.

“It does a fair amount.  But I just took one of these tablets that I swiped from the infirmary.”  He shook a small pillbox of painkillers.

“Oh, so you’re going to be high as a kite, soon?”

“No.  I don’t think this is the really good stuff.  A bit stoned, maybe.”

“Did you find any antiseptic?” I asked.

“I have one better,” he said, and revealed a vial of antibiotic and a plastic case containing individually wrapped disposable syringes.

“Woah, just how organized were you when you slipped out of the infirmary?” I asked, taking them from him.  “You got painkillers, dressings, clothes, and antibiotics! Did you happen to pack the nuclear launch codes, too?”

“Very funny.  I didn’t want to escape just to die of septicemia,” he told me.  “After I electrocuted my guard I had plenty of time to prepare. There was no one else in the tent.”

“I guess that makes sense.  The detention tent I was in was empty, too.  Obviously they were preparing for a lot of casualties and prisoners.”

“Yes.”

“But I don’t get it,” I said, unwrapping a syringe.  “Why don’t they just bomb this place all to hell? Are they really that concerned with the safety of the people here?”

“I don’t think that’s it,” he replied.  “Maybe they will carpet bomb the place, if they can’t get what they really want.  But I think they want the people alive, at least at first.”

“But why?”

“My guess is, they think there’s treasure among the DNA of this place.  And the SSA wants it.”

I frowned, considering that as I loaded the syringe, then, with a bit of reluctance, jabbed it into Vegeta’s arm.  I had seen evidence of genetic divergence in the South East Wilderness in my short stay there years ago. I hadn’t seen any evidence of the same here, but then again, I hadn’t seen many people at all so far, and one of them was a wolf.  A curiously intelligent wolf. A suspiciously intelligent and well behaved “not-exactly” wolf.

I placed the gauze and began binding the wound.  

The SSA was after the Saiya family because their DNA was useful, and they wanted sole use of it.  They didn’t want it to fall into anyone else’s hands. Since the earliest days of the SSA they had used the Genetic Purity Act to  _ dispose  _ of damaged “DNA”, but they had also made a resource out of favorably altered DNA in the case of the Saiyans.  If there was some other useful genetic mutation here, they would surely want it. Even President Cold’s speech made an amount of sense in that light.  The SSA didn’t control who came and went from these Wilderness areas. They would be terrified of having an EE or EAU agent coming in and harvesting novel DNA.

Control.  It was a strange thing.  Everyone wanted more than they had, even the government, which had the most.  I wanted more. And I had just been forced to give up all that I’d built up. I felt I didn’t even have self control right now.  I was touching Vegeta’s warm skin only because I was dressing a wound, and yet my mind was making it something more than it was. It was intimate, but not by choice I reminded myself.  The setting was romantic, but only superficially. I finished pinning the bandage in place and looked to his fire-rimmed profile. His expression was soft and dreamy, but sad. My eyes dropped to his naked torso, the curves of pectoral and abdominal muscles gilded by firelight, and felt ashamed of the admiration and hunger I felt for him.  What had that kiss on the boat meant? Should I have let that happen? A tingling, thrilling sensation ran from my heart to my breasts, belly, and groin. Dammit. I closed my eyes to call my thoughts back into order.

“You can take the bed,” I told him.  “You’re too tall for the couch.”

“I’m not sleeping in the bedroom - it’s freezing,” he said.  “I’m staying here next to the fire.”

“Okay, fine.  I’ll sleep in the bedroom.”

“Don’t be a fool.”

He got up and wandered into the bedroom, then returned with a wool-stuffed duvet, sheepskin and feather pillows from the bed.  He laid the sheepskin on the floor before the fire and flopped down on it, then covered himself with the duvet.

I got up and conducted my own search for bedding, slightly annoyed that he had simply served himself.  Then again, he was injured - maybe I should cut him some slack. I could only find one scratchy blanket.  

“Oh, nice for some,” I complained when I returned to the living room.  “You realize there are only two pillows in the house and you’ve got both of them?  And it’s fucking freezing in the bedroom!”

“I told you it was freezing.  And one of these pillows is for you.”

He flipped the corner of the duvet back in invitation.  Stupidly, I stared, feeling myself coloring, though it was probably not noticeable by firelight.   _ He  _ obviously hadn’t regretted that kiss.  But I couldn’t move. The brief kiss on the boat I could pass off as a momentary slip up.  Getting in bed with him would be a very deliberate choice, and I didn’t know what I wanted to choose.  I wanted him to be my friend still, and what would happen if we slept together and it didn’t work out? My track record with relationships wasn’t exactly stellar.  And I couldn’t get away from the fact that our history made the idea seem… Well, if anybody knew...

“I’m not proposing anything,” he told me, seeing my hesitation.  “We already shared a truck cab after all. I just thought we’d both be warmest here.”

_ Oh, damn _ .  I felt my blush coming on harder, ashamed of myself and my dirty mind.  I slid under the duvet next to him. In our silence, the sounds from outside drifted in.  Some calls and shouts. The very occasional flurry of gunshots.

“The artillery has died off,” I observed.

“They’ll probably send in a reconnaissance team to check how much resistance there is left.”

“Do you think there is much resistance on this side?”

“Not much, but the army is taking a ‘gently, gently’ approach for now.”

The prospect of them giving up the gently gently made me tense up again.  What if they decided to blitz the place overnight? Even if they didn’t, we were sitting in a trap that was tightening around us.

“Vegeta, if we stay here we’re going to be caught again.  Or worse.”

“I know.  We’ll leave as soon as it’s light outside, no matter what the Raditz says about an escape route.  An escape route is no good at all if you don’t use it.”

I started shivering again.

“Are you still cold?” Vegeta asked.

“No.”

He slowly snaked his bad arm under my neck and rolled me towards him.  I opened my mouth to object, but then I didn’t. Instead I let him curl me into his chest, my cheek pressed to the bare skin of his shoulder, my hand resting nervously on his ribs. 

“Doesn’t that hurt your arm?” I said, my last lame attempt at holding things at bay.

“Not really.  Not that you need to worry about that.”

“But I’m supposed to be taking care of you.  Not the other way around.”

He squeezed me a little harder.  “I’m not a fourteen year old kid anymore, remember?  I can take care of  _ you _ .”

He kissed my forehead, and I couldn’t resist anymore.  I relinquished myself to his comfort and let myself feel small and protected.  He stroked my hair. If I closed my eyes it was like one of my parents comforting me after a bad dream.  What a dream it had been. 

I opened my eyes, feeling calmer, but excited in another way.  His fingertips brushed through my hair, then down my throat ever so softly.  He was watching me, his eyes as dark as the gaps between the stars in the light of the fire and I could feel his heart beating faster under his ribs.  His breathing got deeper, harsher. Heat blossomed through me, a giddy ebullience that rose from my womb and made it suddenly hard to breathe without panting.

“I thought you said you weren’t proposing anything,” I said.

“I wasn’t,” he said.  “But feel free to make your own offer, should you wish.”

I laughed, and his returning grin knocked me past all sense.  I’d do a lot for that smile, and I could certainly move my reservations aside enough to rise up on one elbow so that I could lean down and kiss him.

But of course, it wasn’t just a kiss.  Unlike the hesitant kiss on the boat, we were all in on both sides.  As soon as his lips pressed back greedily into mine, it broke the lid I’d been keeping on my feelings, and the desire boiled over.  My lips were alive and sensitive to the feel of his, like they hadn’t been since my very first kiss - like they’d been half-dead to anyone else’s.   He wrapped his arms around me, dragging me on top of him with his good arm, holding me tighter than was probably wise with his other one. My tongue explored his mouth, and when his quested ino mine I moaned.  I wanted his touch, all over me, everywhere. I almost lost my head with wanting it all, him all, all at once.

His hands tightened on me, one hitching my knee around him, then returning to grasp my ass.  I was maddened, pushed to recklessness. Why not Vegeta? Of course, Vegeta! Things were coming undone in my head, barriers falling apart and leaving only vistas to possibilities.  Of course, Vegeta! I’d seen his past, I’d glimpsed his future, and I was falling for him now.

I realized I was clutching at his naked chest, yet here I was fully clothed.  Vegeta was fumbling with the back of the pinafore.

“How does this thing _ come off? _ ”

I sat up, half astride him to pull it off over my head.  Then his hands were at the buttons of the linen shirt, undoing it down the front.  It hung open while he dipped his hands inside, sliding them up my hips and ribs, making me shiver until they cupped my breasts.

I gasped, but it was well masked by Vegeta’s own as he fondled me, his thumbs stroking over my nipples.

“Come down here,” he said, “it’s getting chilly.”

I started to lay back down, but he caught my hips and pulled me up the sheepskin rug,  positioning me before pressing me down, the heat between my legs flush on the hardness of his cock, and I couldn’t help moaning again.  I leaned down and kissed him again, lost in the feeling of my nipples pressing against his chest. I was bursting at the seams and only wanted a little friction to light to fuse and I’d be off like a rocket.

My shirt came off completely, pulled away by Vegeta so that his hands could sweep my back, up and down, and back to my breasts.  He was moving below me, or maybe I was moving above him, grinding ourselves together, impatient to be on with business, but not so impatient that we weren’t going to enjoy every second of foreplay.  His hand slipped down the back of my borrowed pants - as I wasn’t wearing any underwear, when he reached around to cup my sex, his fingers found their way through folds with no resistance at all. I whimpered into his mouth and he held me tighter with his other arm, pinning me while he worked my own juices over me.  His fingers teased my clit and then he dipped one inside me. I let him coax me along, hypnotised by pleasure until I realized I might actually come from his ministrations. I pulled away with a gasp.

“What’s wrong?” he panted as I shuffled down his body on hands and knees.  I grabbed the fly of his pants.

“These off!  Now! Thanks!”

He rushed to comply, dealing with the belt, buttons and zip in the dark much faster than I would have, and pushed them down his hips.  He wore regulation gray briefs, straining at the front with his folded over erection. My hands went to it, squeezing it a little through the fabric and making him arch his hips up into my touch.  Then I pulled the front band down to see what I was dealing with, and touched the silk-soft skin. It sprang up, eager to be free at last. I took him in hand - I was not disappointed - then bowed my head, inspired to tease him with my mouth.  I licked up the underside of it, suppressing a giggle as it twitched. When I got to the head I pouted and slid it into my mouth.

“Ah!” Vegeta bucked up from the rug, one hand coming to rest on my head as I bobbed it, running my plumped lips over his sensitive head over and over.  “Bulma!”

I felt another rush of wetness between my legs at his cry.  This wasn’t my typical first date repertoire - I wanted something far more special for Vegeta.  The boy had been so deprived.

I froze, my thoughts piling up like a derailed train as the image of the younger Vegeta came to mind, desperate for even a hug, coming apart at the touch of my hand.  He arched up again, pushing gently on the back of my head, and I took him deeper into my mouth, moving on autopilot as I started to feel cold again, cold with realization and disgust at myself.  Was I taking advantage of him? Under the guise of gifting him something? He’d been fourteen! What the fuck was I doing? I had his dick in my mouth!

“Just warning you,” he said, “that if you keep on like that for much longer, things are going to be over rather quickly!”

I stopped, and straightened to kneeling, mind reeling.  Vegeta used the space to get his pants off the rest of the way.  Were we going to do this? Was this right to let happen? In my mind I was crashing into ruins of the barriers that had just fallen down.  Was I the minder or the friend? The carer or the cared for? Were we peers, or was one of us a predator?

He reached for the drawstring that kept my pants up, and I pulled away, not realizing I was about to.

“No?” he asked.

What was I going to do?  Stop things at this point?  Jeez, I needed to sort my head out!  He was twenty five!

“Do you have any kind of protection?” I asked, stalling for time, though it was a very pertinent question.

“No need,” Vegeta said, smiling and tugging the drawstring loose.  I caught the waistband before they could fall down.

“What do you mean, no need?”  

“For my sixteenth birthday the army gave me the gift of a vasectomy,” he replied, matter-of-factly.

“What?  When you were  _ sixteen? _ ”  I tried to imagine why a sixteen year old would be given a vasectomy, and nothing I came up with put me back in the mood.  I was not the first woman he’d been with, that was obvious, and that should have been good, because it made me feel less like a creep, but for some reason the idea of him being some precocious lothario also upset me.  __ “Getting around a lot, were you?”

He stopped still.  I could see that question annoyed him.

“No.  But they didn’t want any unauthorized Saiyan pregnancies on base, or off base for that matter, if we were later sent on missions.”

“Oh.  I guess that makes sense.”  And then my mind just refused to drop the subject.  “Who was having sex on base though? That’s a little...”

Vegeta gave me a strange look.  “It was against the rules, but it was a rule that got broken.”

“How...often?”

“I don’t know.  I didn’t do a comprehensive survey!  Are you angling for my complete sexual history or something?”

I flushed with shame.  I kind of was, I realized.  I don’t know why, as I had never enquired about the sexual history of anyone I’d been with in the past.  At least once that I know of, my utter lack of enquiry had landed me a man in my bed whom I found out later was married.  Ick.

“No.  I don’t know.  Forget I said anything.”

He didn’t reply, and didn’t say anything for such a long moment that I wanted to squirm away.  I started to feel ridiculous kneeling above him bare chested. A small movement in his lap caught my attention  and I looked down. Oh, yeah, I was killing the mood  _ big  _ time.

Getting annoyed with myself I lay back down next to him and pulled the duvet up over myself.  My inability to do proper relationships was already starting to show. 

He lay back down next to me.

“I’ve had a few partners over the years,” he said eventually.  “No girlfriend though. Nothing I could call a relationship. What about you?”

Something a bit ugly reared in me at the mention of the few nameless partners, but I tied it down fast.  After all, it would be hard to rationalize my partners as a ‘few.’ I couldn’t count them on my fingers, but I could almost manage it if I used my toes as well.  Maybe it could be called a few if I only included events lasting more than one day?

“Same.  I dated.  But no girlfriends.  Or boyfriends for that matter.”  Oops. I had forgotten about Tien.  Possibly that meant he didn’t count.

He didn’t react at all to my lame attempt at humor.  Instead he rolled onto his side to look at me.

“Then we’re about even.”

“I guess we are.”

“What is going on in that head of yours?”

“I don’t know.”  I really didn’t. It seemed like every word that came out of my mouth made things more awkward between us, and yet I couldn’t seem to help saying them.  “This is just a bit weird, you know?”

“Is it?”

“I mean, it’s not like we’ve discussed things before we started getting naked.”  I never discussed things before sex.  _ Never _ .  What was I on about?

He frowned.  “What did you want to discuss?”  

“Protection is not just about pregnancy you know.”  Oh, classy. True, but jeez. My cheeks were burning like a spanked bottom.

“In that case you’ll be delighted to know that as part of the extensive and invasive monitoring that comes with being a Saiyan slave, I had regular swabs and cultures taken.  Unless you mean to imply that it’s  _ me _ that’s going to need a dose of antibiotics after lying down with you?”

I deeply regretted this line of questioning.  “I’m clean, last I checked.”

“Then I’m willing to take the risk.  Unless you don’t want to.”

Uh, I didn’t know what I wanted.  

“Bulma?”

“I think…” I started tentatively, “that I am having a problem reconciling you, as you are now, with the you that I knew back then.  It’s hard to believe you’re the same person, and in some ways...it’s easier for me to think of you as not the same person. Do you know what I mean?  You were only a kid then.”

“And you were  _ so  _ much older,” he said.  “A big grown-up twenty year old.”

I laughed.  He was right - and I had been immature for my age.  I suspected I still was.

“Right.  But there’s a lot I don’t know about you.  I don’t know how you turned into the man you are now.  I have so many questions - I mean, I’ve spent the last eleven years wondering if you were okay.  You and Goku both.” 

“I could say the same thing of you.”

“Am I not how you remember me?”

His expression clouded, and he looked past me into the dark.  “You’re not what I expected.”

“You liked me back then, though.  You had a crush on me, I thought.”

“Yes.”

“But it’s different?”

“It is.”  He reached up to touch my face.  I guessed it  _ was  _ different.  He wasn’t some kid grabbing my hand and asking if I had a boyfriend.  Without warning I remembered that afternoon at Lac Brulé, in a flash reliving it.  The memory of bullets shredding the leaves next to me left me shaking. I heard Vegeta’s voice tell me to run.  Oh, jeez, I was going to give myself nightmares again.

Vegeta frowned, reading some of this in my face and my suddenly thundering heart.  “What is it?”

“You know, until you turned up I didn’t even know if you were alive.  I still don’t know if Goku is alive.” My voice quavered. “The last time I saw you for sure, you had a gun pressed to your head.”

“I didn’t think to ask,” he said.  “What happened to you after Zarbon and his unit caught up to us in Quebec?  You were in prison for two years, you said? What was that like?”

“It sucked.”

“Were you in danger?”

“Not really, but I was so angry, I can’t even-”  Oh, it was still there, that burning pit of fury for my compulsory time out, and even more for the label I’d had to wear.  Sex offender! The sex offender who had never had sex!

“You’re not very big.  I imagine prison was a dangerous place for you.”

“I don’t think women’s prison is like men’s prison,” I said.  “There aren’t that many fights. I didn’t get shanked in the showers, or get made anyone’s bitch.  I just got bullied.”

“Bullied how?”

“People would say things.  Or they wouldn’t talk to me at all.  I had all sorts of stuff stolen from me, even dessert in the canteen, right off my tray!  Word got around what I was in there for, and there was one woman in particular…” I ground my teeth.  “She came up with a catchy name for me.  _ The Teen Peen Queen _ , so that’s what all the big time bitches called me.  They teased me about liking it small, or called me the Pedo-trician, cause you know, doctor and child molester!  They were in there for things like aggravated assault and child neglect, and  _ I  _ was the bad one, they thought.”

“I hadn’t thought about that aspect of it.  I’m sorry.”

We lay there in silence for a moment while I mastered my anger again.  

“Anyway,” I continued, when I felt I could talk without hissing. “Everytime I began feeling too sorry for myself, I’d remember that you might not have it so good.  Maybe you were dead? Maybe you were alive and would never be free again? I thought about you everyday, wondering if you hated me for failing you.”

“Did you really?”  He seemed surprised.

“Yes.  Did you think of me?”  As soon as I asked it, I realized this was an unfair question.  It was digging for one particular answer.

He was silent for a long time.  “Maybe I did at first. That part of my life is hazy.”

_ That  _ wasn’t the answer!  I rolled onto my side to see his face better. 

“Vegeta, what the hell did they do to you that made you just...lose a chunk of your life?  It’s like they tried to swipe me out of your mind!”

“If I had to guess, truth serums, then hypnotics to soften me up to take a different version of the truth.  They can cause brain damage and permanent memory loss if they’re over used. They used their sticks and carrots, and I fell into line, but I didn’t forget you entirely.”

Not entirely.  That hurt. I hurt for what they’d done to him - no wonder he’d changed!  And I hurt for me. This made me the only one who really knew what had happened in that week or so I’d known him.  This reminded me of another painful episode that had haunted me through the years.

“Vegeta, was that you on the stand during the trial?”

“The trial?”

“You know, that pantomime of justice where they convicted me of abducting and molesting you?”

He didn’t answer, his expression was shocked.

“Is that a no?”

“I don’t know.”  He stared at the flames behind me.  

The boy in the trial had looked like him, but it could have been another Vegeta.  He had testified from a different courtroom over closed circuit relay, and I couldn’t see his irises well enough to identify him.  He had looked a little older, but then again, some time had passed - he should have looked older. My heart fell.

“I hoped that when they got you to testify that you would deny everything and defend me, but the moment you started answering questions I knew I was doomed.  You told the court that we had made out on your balcony on the ship, that I’d had sex with you the night I came to see you alone, that I said I'd be your girlfriend if you came with me off the ship, and we’d had sex in the woods before you were caught.  In fact, you told it  _ enthusiastically _ .  All I could think was, this has to be a different Vegeta!  My Vegeta couldn't have lied like that. But maybe they had convinced you it was true...”  

That wasn’t the only testimony that had stitched me up.  Rifleman’s testifying that I had spent “way more” time with the boy than any other psychologist, that I had flouted procedure and safety guidelines and been caught in the habitat with my hood off, and that I had shown ‘unwarranted’ sympathy towards Vegeta, had been fairly damning.  It was all technically true, but in the context of the trial it had sounded bad. Really bad. 

My defense had called Yamcha as a witness, too.  He’d come, with a military police escort, looking thin, pale, and sick.  His testimony that he had seen nothing untoward between Vegeta and I, and that he had supervised most of my visits, sounded weak in comparison.  I had given him plausible deniability for his own sake, and he had to maintain the illusion of impartiality. And what good it had done had been completely undone when the prosecution called the co-pilot of the jepcopter.  We had thought we were being discreet. Not discreet enough, apparently, and the prosecution then painted me as a hypersexual deviant who controlled the males around me with sex. They had destroyed Yamcha on the witness stand, and by the time they were done I feared for him.  Feared what awaited him when the military police took him back to wherever they’d dragged him from. I had tracked him down after I got out of prison, or at least, I was pretty certain I had, as the name and the date of the dishonorable discharge matched, but he had never replied to the message I sent him.

“It wasn't me,” Vegeta said, snapping me out of my memories.  “I  _ can _ lie.  I've gotten very good at that.  And they did try to convince me that you had seduced me, but I was never at any trial.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.  How long after they captured me was the trial?”

“Six or seven months.”

“There's no way they would have risked bringing me out in public at that point.”

“So they dragged another boy into this to lie for them?”

“He was probably promised a tidy reward for doing what they said, and threatened with punishment if he screwed up.  It was probably Tarble One.”

“Oh my god, it never ends!’  I turned onto my stomach and hid my face in my hands.  “ _ This _ is why I want there to be a way to free all the Saiyans!”

“I don’t think all the Saiyans want to be free, though.”

“Why not?” I asked, raising my head again.

“The program is decades old now.  The inmates are running the asylum to an extent.”

“You mean...some of them are in  _ charge? _ ”

“Not in the top positions, but there  _ are  _ Saiyan officers.  The true believers.  That’s all they’ve ever known.  That’s why I don’t trust that Raditz, and why he doesn’t trust me.  We’re not used to coming across another Saiyan whose mind is free from indoctorination.”

“ _ Really? _ ”

He looked at me.  “If I hadn't met you, I'd probably be a true believer, too, accepting everything they said and gave me.”

“I guess I might have been the same,” I admitted, “if I hadn’t met Goku.”

Vegeta’s jaw tightened at that.  “That guy was really special to you, wasn’t he?  You mention him a lot.”

“He was my best friend.”

“Not your boyfriend?”

“No.”  I gave Vegeta a sly look.  Could he possibly be a little jealous of someone he never met?  “I already told you I’ve never had a steady boyfriend.”

“How come?  Do you not want relationships?”

_ Urgh _ .  “No, I just…”   _ Suck at them _ .  “I guess I haven’t been able to be myself enough for any relationship to work.  I have too many secrets. It gets in the way.”

He frowned and turned onto his back.

A log on the fire collapsed in a shower of sparks.  Vegeta got up and stepped over me, taking more wood from the basket and feeding it into the flames.  I stared at him in his naked glory, then lowered my eyes as he turned back and slid under the duvet again.  Damn it, why had I forced the night to turn so serious?

Almost shyly, he put a hand on my belly and trailed his fingers up my chest to my face.

“I’d have been your boyfriend,” he said, his smile cheeky.  He suddenly reunited with his former self in my mind, making one unbroken being.

I smiled in return.  “I know you would have.”

“How transparent I must have been.”

“Like a window.”

Now we hesitated again.  This was the true threshold.  Knowing what we now knew of the other’s mind, would we continue?

He slowly leaned in and kissed me again, and I pressed my body into his, seeking the comfort of skin against skin.  I ran a hand down his back, overjoyed by the feeling of his solidity. My fingers brushed imperfections in the skin - other scars?  Had he been injured other times in the course of his military career? I quested lower, feeling one hard hauch flexing under my hand.  Dang. He palmed one of my breasts, then slid down under the duvet to do the other one justice with his mouth, the dull thrill building between my legs again, fed by the waves of sensation he caused with with his hands and mouth.  

We moved slower than before, taking time to appreciate each other, stroking and teasing each other back to a state of molten arousal.  It felt so good, and I was soon aching again, aching to have him inside me. But despite all that, I felt nervous, which was ridiculous.   There was something different about being with Vegeta that wasn’t the way I’d felt about Tien or any man I had been with. I wanted to have sex with him, but I also wanted to hold tight to him and have him never let me go.  It scared me a little. A little part of me was still worried that this was wrong.

He tugged the pants down my hips, and I helped him pull them all the way off.  He planted himself between my legs, his erection trapped between us. 

“This isn't weird, is it?” I asked.  “That I feel...this way about you?”

“Which way is that?”

“Like I... like I don't ever want to lose you again.”

He squeezed my shoulders hard.  “If you lose me, you'd better be fast, because I'll only be two steps behind you.”

I laughed, but I appreciated the sentiment.  

“But is it weird because I used to be your psychologist?”

“Only technically, for a very short time. And we were both really young at the time.  Is that still bothering you?”

I smiled in embarrassment.

“It doesn’t bother me,” he said.  “I doubt it ever did.”

And then he was kissing me again, and kissing my throat, sucking on the skin there and making tingles spread out through my body.  I ran my hands over his back and shoulders, wanting to touch all parts of him. I bucked under him, trying to hurry his entrance-

A massive sound made the very air around us flex.  We felt it through the ground. Vegeta grabbed me tight, covering me with himself.  The rumble that followed the explosion went on and on, and then there was a roaring clatter, like a hailstorm from hell, as debris rained down on the house, striking the roof and window panes.

When the noise died down, Vegeta leapt up, and so did I.  Without a word we began yanking our clothes back on, me starting with my damp bra and panties and finishing with my damp snow boots and coat.

We ran outside.

 


	13. The Bronx - 2144

**CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE BRONX 2144**

 

There was a lot of shouting, and people running from The Bones, some of them carrying wounded and laying them in the gardens of the cottages.  Flashlights flickered through a dust cloud that was rolling out between the buildings, and a dull orange glow lit its core. Someone stumbled through it, looking like they were blinded, and I ran to them.  

“Don’t go in there!” Vegeta shouted, following me.

It was the woman from the commissary, her face and arms lacerated and crying hysterically.

Vegeta caught up to me and took hold of my arm.  “We need to get her out of here!” I said to him. He let go of me and took hold of the woman instead, and we walked her back towards the open area.  I could see the cuts were superficial - bloody and painful, but not immediately life threatening.

More people loomed out of the dust next to us - Aaliyah and her war room staff, all coughing.  When we made it back to the gardens someone with a large medical kit took the woman from us.

“What happened?” Vegeta asked, returning to Aaliyah’s group.  

Aaliyah  motioned back at the settling dust cloud.

“Those a-holes took out our communication tower!”

“Good thing it was only a  _ decoy  _ tower,” said Pelham, still coughing, his hair gray with dust.  The Mayor gave him a furious look.

“We still lost people!”

Another boom rang out from further away.  

“They're losing patience,” Vegeta said.  “If you've got an escape plan, use it now!  What are you waiting for?”

“Our ride out of here!” she yelled back.  Then she turned to her team. “We need to start the evacuation now, even if they're not ready on the other end, but it’s going to take time.  Chichi, what did they just take out?” she asked one of her aides, the black haired, Asian-looking woman. The woman’s face went blank again for a few moments, and then tears sprang to her eyes.

“The kitchen at the river.”

“They’re targeting our  _ kitchens? _ ”

“You don’t have much in the way of a base of operations,” Vegeta said.  “They’re probably targeting anywhere with a higher heat signature and hoping to get lucky.”

Which was awful, but it gave me an idea.

“How hi-tech is the equipment you’re using?” I asked the Mayor.  

“Well...some.  We’re not ignorant savages like your government likes to portray us.”

“Would you miss it?  Could you do without it?”

“Maybe.  Why?”

“Because the army will be using electronic aiming and guidance systems, and heavy reliance on electronic communication.  And I have an idea.”

...

Vegeta, Pelham, Aaliyah, and I, plus a few other others ran back into the Bones to the large capacitors that were still powering some of the buildings.  Vegeta hadn’t wanted me to come, but I had told him there was no way I was letting him out of my sight now.

“The sooner we do this, the sooner we will be safe,” I said when he began to argue.

Pelham and Vegeta stripped the cladding off the metal boxes with crowbars, then felt around for the parts carrying the highest current.

“Think I got it,” said Pelham, squatting awkwardly, pressed to the metal plates and coils.

“What about you, Vegeta?”

“Ready!” he reported from the other side.  “Now stand back!”

I did, as did everyone else.  

“Remember, the largest discharge of power you can manage, on the count of three, got it?” I asked.

“Do it.”

“One.  Two. Three!”

There was a rapidly ascending hum and then a blinding flash and stunning pop.  While the rest of us staggered even further back, unable to see for a few seconds, there was the overpowering smell of burnt metal.   

“Ah, shit!”

The first thing I could make out was Pelham rolling on the ground, trying to put out the fire on his jacket sleeves.  The remaining lights in the Bones had gone out, as well as the floodlights on the other side of the wall, and there wasn’t even starlight to see by.  Then something smashed into the ground close by, making us all shout in surprise. Aaliyah turned on her flashlight and we saw it was a drone, fallen out of the sky like a poisoned pigeon.  

“Well, it seems to have worked,” she said to me.  “You’ve just bought us the time we need to get out of here.  Thank you.”

“Ah, I should’ve thought of an EMP!” Pelham grizzled.

“Then why didn’t you?” Vegeta asked.  The arms of his coat were smoking and blackened.  “They taught us that in strategic warfare class!”

“Then why didn’t  _ you? _ ” Pelham shot back.

“Chichi,” Aaliyah said.  “Send out the word to begin the evac.”

Chichi closed her eyes, only for a second this time.  “Done.”

Vegeta produced his Saiyan-powered flashlight from one of his seemingly bottomless pockets.  As we started walking East through the Bones, I asked Pelham, “How is that girl communicating?  It can’t be electronic! We just fried every unprotected circuit for miles.”

I couldn’t see his face in the dark, but he sounded smug.  “It isn’t. She’s a King, and the King family have a special ability to communicate to each other...telepathically.”

“ _ What? _ ” Vegeta and I cried at once.

“I know.  Unreal, huh?”

“More unreal than shooting lightning out of your fingers?” I said.  But this was the first time I had actually heard of a non-theoretical, useful mutation besides the Saiyan one.  “It looks like your theory is right, Vegeta,” I said. “The treasure is the people.”

“You’re damn right, the treasure is the people,” said Pelham.

We joined a flow of of evacuating defenders heading down the remains of a street towards a low, tumbled down brick wall and then filing down into a hole next to it.  I saw at least a dozen wolves in the mix, moving with as much purpose as the people.

“Is that a bunker?” I asked Pelham.  I didn’t like the idea of packing down into a deep, dark space.

“No.  It’s our way out.”

We were nearly there when the sound of gunfire started up to our rear.  Aaliyah stopped, and at her side, Chichi froze.

“There’s a team of Saiyans come over the wall at the park,” Chichi announced.  “They’re attacking those retreating!”

I looked at Vegeta and saw his face stricken.

“Dammit,” said Aaliyah.  “If our guys run and immediately lead them underground, this is all over.  They’ll just follow us down there, and we’ll all be caught and slaughtered.”

“Then what?” asked Vegeta.  “What are you going to do about it?”

“Some of us have to go back and fight a rearguard action to let the rest of us get away unseen.”

There was a moment's pause while everyone absorbed the implications of this.  I was suddenly super glad that Vegeta had said he wouldn't fight. He’d be safe.

“I'll lead it,” said Pelham.  

“No you won’t, I will,” said the Mayor.

“I’m coming too,” said Vegeta.  My heart stopped.

“I thought you were staying out of the fight,” Pelham pointed out.

“They’re Saiyans - ordinary defenders won’t be a match against them.  It’ll be a rout.”

“Luckily we don’t have only ordinary soldiers,” Aaliyah said, and turned to Chichi again.  “Send out the words that all the Bjorns are to converge at the breach. Everyone else is to continue with the evacuation.”  Then she spoke to the other aides. “Everyone, spread the word. Bjorns to the breach at the park, everyone else, keep going!”

People began moving again, into the hole in the ground mostly, but Aaliyah, Pelham and Chichi started moving towards the gunfire.  Chichi pulled forward something that had been dangling at her back to cradle in her arms. It was a machine gun. Pelham took a weapon from one of those heading underground and gave it to Vegeta, who looped the shoulder strap over his body.

“Bulma, get going,” Vegeta told me.

“You’re kidding,” I said.

“I’m not,” he replied.  “This is going to be very dangerous, and you are very killable.”

“So are you!”

“Not as killable as you are!  Go!”

He shoved me towards the hole, but I twisted away and jumped to his side, grabbing hold of his arm.

“I’m not going unless you’re going, too!”

“You need to get out of here!  If I don’t stay, the chances of all of us dying go up!  But if you stay the chances of you dying go  _ way  _ up!”

“I can’t let you go and get yourself killed!” I shouted.  “I did all this for you, Vegeta! This is about getting  _ you  _ free, you idiot!”

“Oh my God, Bulma there is no point in sacrificing yourself for me!”

“You can talk!  What do you think you’re doing, going off risking your life to buy us time?”  I was desperate. Hadn’t I just said I never wanted to lose him again?

“Just go with them!  Please! Please, Bulma!”

“You said you’d be two steps behind me!” I accused him, but I could already feel that I couldn’t stop this from happening.  He was going to charge into battle and there was not a lot I could do about it. I started to cry.

“I will be,” he said, pulling me into him and kissing me hard on the mouth.  “I’ll be two steps behind.”

“You’d better be!”

“Ah, hey!” a voice shouted from above us.  “I found them!”

Vegeta shone his flashlight upwards - a huge man in army fatigues and carrying a clear plastic shield was standing on the crumbled masonry wall above us.  Vegeta shoved me away from himself.

“Nappa!” he hissed, and fired a bolt of electricity up at him, more than enough to fry an ordinary human, but the guy just fell back off the wall swearing.  Vegeta started around the corner after him, and I followed, hanging back. We were both overtaken by something massive in the dark.

“Coming through!”

By Vegeta’s flashlight I saw a man even larger than Nappa charge the fallen soldier.  He was easily the biggest man I’d ever seen, his head massive and distorted, with a long, lantern jaw and a tuft of ginger hair on top.  The Nappa got to his feet just in time for the newcomer to swing a nail-studded mace at him. Nappa raised his shield, but the blow snapped the thing in half, and Nappa was knocked back against the wall. 

“Recoome for the win!” the giant gloated, but Nappa wasn’t done yet.  He shot electricity across the gap and the giant doubled over, crying out in pain, but he didn’t go down.

“What the hell is that?”  Vegeta asked. Then he apparently decided it didn’t matter.  He turned and pushed me back the way we’d come. 

“Got out of here, Bulma!”

I didn’t argue anymore, but I hadn’t gone two steps before Vegeta leapt to my side.  The darkness was lit for a fraction of a second as Vegeta took a hit of lightning from our side.  Vegeta went to his knee with a gasp, then fired back, and now I really understood how out of place I was in this fight.  I curled up against the wall, looking for a way out of the melee while Vegeta traded fire with whoever it was across the road.  His flashlight showed someone crouching behind a plastic shield. Metal finger shapes protruded from the front of it, and this is where the lightning was coming from.  The attacker could fire while remaining completely protected.

I turned as the Nappa landed spread eagle on the road.  His shield was gone, and Recoome, assuming that was his name, leapt after him.  The Nappa yelped and rolled to one side, them stumbled away, back towards the breach clutching his guts.  Recoome stood in the middle of the road chuckling as he watched him go. The figure behind the shield raised something to the notch of its shield, and suddenly the lightning was swapped for gunfire, aimed at Recoome.

“Ow!” the man roared, then zeroed in on the source of the shots and ran at them.  He swung a leg and the figure in black fatigues and helmet was launched up and over the ruins of a building with a scream.

“Fucking hell!” said Vegeta.

The man turned to us.  “Are you on our side?” he asked.

“Yes!” I shouted.

Vegeta held out a hand to me and pulled me to my feet.  Down the road, the fight seemed to be coming closer - red flashes and cracks of gunfire and white flashes and snaps of lightning lit the street in fits and starts.

“Can you take this woman to the evacuation tunnel?” Vegeta asked him.  “And keep her safe?”

_ What? _

“I sure can.  Give her here.”

“Vegeta!” I protested, but he shoved me towards Recoome, and the man scooped me up like a doll and cradled me against his chest.  Up close he was no more lovely to look at, and he didn’t smell all that great either. And then he ran, huge loping strides that had me clinging to his clothes.  He only wore a rough shirt, pants and some kind of animal skin on his shoulders, as if it wasn’t close to freezing out, and they were scorched, and torn in a few places, with some small dribbles of blood soaking them.  I looked up at his face. There was just a graze there.

“How come those bullets and lightning didn’t kill you?” I asked.

“Bjorn folk have very thick skins,” he said.  “And hard muscles!”

He dropped me at the entrance to the tunnel.  The crowd was gone, save for a few people who were straining to see the battle up ahead.

“Down you go,” said Recoome, but I stopped on the first step, crouching down with some of Aaliyah’s crew.

“I’m not going anywhere until Vegeta gets back,” I said.

“Mmm, suit yourself,” Recoome replied, and ran back towards the frey.

It was only a few minutes, but it was a terrible few minutes.  Between the shots there were shouts and sometimes screams, and one particular wail that made me feel faint, because it sounded like it could be Vegeta’s.  The lights began to recede again, and then things started to get quiet. We heard the sound of people running back towards us and everyone retreated down the stairs, holding our breath.  If it was the army, we couldn’t be found. People around me raised guns at the ready.

“Coming through!” called a familiar voice, and Recoome came bounding down the steps, slipping at the end because the treads were too small for his feet, and the ancient concrete and tile crumbled under his weight.  The flashlights of those following lit up the wall for a moment, and I saw a sign that said Norwood-205th Street, with a white D in an orange circle. I suddenly realized what this escape route was - part of the fabled New York Subway system.

Recoome had something slung over his shoulder that groaned loudly.  He repositioned him, pulling the man into his arms. It was Pelham, and Recoome handled the big man like he was no heavier than a bag of carrots.

“Raddy, are you okay, buddy?”

“Oh...what the fuck do you think?” Pelham moaned.  “I’ve been shot in the fucking leg!”

“Someone bind that wound, we can’t have the Chief bleeding out!” said Aaliyah, already giving orders the instant she appeared.  The whole group started to push down the dark space - the old platform I guessed - to make way for the others who were still coming in.  Half a dozen giants like Recoome took up a lot of space, and two of them had another slung between them. Some carried another casualties.

“That’s the last of us!” said Aaliyah.  “Close it up!”

“Get back from the stairs!” someone else was yelling.

“What if there’s still someone out there?” a woman asked.

“If there are, we can’t wait for them,” Aaliyah replied.  “We don’t have time!”

“Where’s Vegeta?” I shouted, panicking when I couldn’t see him in the confusion of shadows and jumbled flashlights.  A hand clawed out of the gap between two Bjorns and grabbed my forearm.

“Here!”

I threw myself into his arms.

“Two steps behind you, didn’t I say?”

I was too glad to speak.  I squeezed him tight, ignoring the sound of people hammering at wooden props behind us.  We only broke apart when the sound of rocks and gravel falling with tremendous force filled the space, and chips of rock scattered around our feet.

Everyone was silent for a few moments after that, except for Pelham, who was gasping as his leg was bound.  People shone their lights at the pile of rubble that now filled the stairway. We could hear nothing from outside.

“Let’s get moving and see if we can catch the rest up,” said Aaliyah.  “We’ve got a long way to go tonight.”

We stepped down onto the tracks and began walking into the dark of the tunnel.  The track was wide enough for two people to walk between the rails, so Vegeta and I went side by side, hand in hand.  Even with the flashlight he held, and some people had no lights, it was hard to judge the footing and stumble on the cross-ties, but after a while our strides adjusted to the regular gaps, and we were able to keep more or less stable.  I felt so thankful to my office mate and her shoe fetish, first for providing me with snow boots to steal, and secondly, for having such good quality boots. A lesser pair may have disintegrated after the last few days of treatment they’d had.

We moved, going as fast as seemed wise.  The subway had a strange smell, dusty, musty, and metallic.  Before long we came to a train, its aluminum siding still holding a dull sheen after all these years.  The door at the back hung open, and we all filed inside, then down the middle of car after car of a commuter train.  It smelled much worse in here. There was mold and rot smells, and the floor was slimy with mold. 

“Did people die in here during the war?” I asked no one in particular, but the woman in front of me turned.  I saw it was Chichi, her face smeared with tears and she still clutched her gun. I wonder if she had used it in battle.  She wasn’t crying now though.

“No, the people who were in the subway survived,” she said.  “People only died in the parts under Manhattan that collapsed when the bomb exploded.  Everywhere else, the subway saved their lives.”

When we stepped off the other end of the train, two flatbed trucks awaited.  They had metal rims instead of tires. We piled onto the second one with Aaliyah, Chichi, and Recoome, who was still nursing his friend, Pelham.

“Sweet mother of-!” Pelham hissed as the truck started moving, and his leg was jostled by another passenger.  Vegeta started searching through his pockets until he fished out the pillbox and shook it in front of Pelham’s face.

“I got painkillers.  Want some?”

Pelham frowned.  “Like, thanks, but  _ no thanks _ .”

“I thought you seemed like you were in a lot of pain.”

“I don’t take candy from strangers.”

The hum of the truck’s electric motor began to pitch down, and the headlights on the tunnel walls of the vehicle in the lead started to get away.

“Chichi, go see what’s going on,” Aaliyah told her.  Chichi squeezed herself up the front of the flatbed and leaned out to talk to whoever was in the cab.  When she came back she said, “The truck’s batteries are out of juice. They say can Pelham come up front and power it instead, or we’ll all end up walking.”

Pelham struggled to rise and then let his head fall back on the truck bed.  “Um, nope.”

“I’ll do it,” said Vegeta.  He got up and began making his way to the front, and I started to follow, but then realized there was no point.  We were going to the same destination. I crouched back down, just a little way from where I’d been sitting.

“Aaliyah,” I heard Pelham say.  “Don’t trust that Saiyan.”

All my attention leapt on what was said next.

“Why not?” Aaliyah asked.

“I had one of the Saiyans soldiers pinned down under fire, and someone electrocuted me, and I think it was him.  It knocked me flat, and that’s when I took this bullet.”

“That skirmish was totally chaotic.  What makes you think it was him?”

“I’m pretty sure he was the only Saiyan  _ behind  _ me.”

“Could it have been an honest mistake?”

I couldn’t hear Pelham’s reply to that - he may have nodded or shook his head or shrugged.  But it confirmed Vegeta’s thought that Pelham didn’t trust him. I hoped he didn’t turn Aaliyah and the others against him.

We headed South until the truck slowed at a station marked 161st Street - Yankee Stadium.  We climbed the steps and then took an emergency stairwell to the surface. For a few moments we were in the open before following the trail of evacuees up a hideously rusted steel stairway, reinforced in places with hodge-podge repairs.  I crossed my fingers and wondered why we were going  _ up _ .

It seemed we had caught up with the stragglers of the earlier evacuees.  The wounded were hobbling up on their friend’s arms, or else slung in blankets used as makeshift stretchers.  Our wounded were carried in the arms of giants, but there was a hold up on the stairs as they had to take the aged structure one by one.

On the elevated platform we moved under the cover of the verandah as far as it went, then hopped onto the tracks, which angled down to the waiting mouth of another tunnel.  Everyone instinctually hurried as they made the open air dash to the tunnel. I figured that the advantage of this escape route was that we couldn’t be seen from above ground, but each tiny link that was exposed to the sky gave a drone or a satellite the chance to pick us out.  

Into the cover of the ground we went again, passing another underground station before two tunnels merged, and we met another stream of evacuees coming from that direction.  We all slowed as another truck hummed up the track to meet us. 

“We’ll take the wounded first, and then whoever else can fit,” the driver said, sitting up out of the window of the cab.  Vegeta and I were too far back to get a seat, and the truck rolled away again, going backwards down the tunnel and deeper into the earth.  The rest of us hurried; the longer this evacuation took the more the urgency was rising.

“I don’t even know where we’re going, do you?” I asked Vegeta.

He shook his head.

The deeper we got the wetter the walls of the subway became, and then the floor began to have puddles between the cross-ties.  The air smelled of stagnant water. Sometimes the tunnel widened into the empty, dark spaces of platforms, eerie with an almost watchful silence as we passed by, everyone speaking in whispers that echoed off the unseen walls.  Eventually we were sloshing through freezing water, tripping on the submerged cross-ties.

The truck returned and loaded more of us on its back.  Sitting precariously on the edge of the bed with our feet dangling, we still got wet to our knees.

“Where is all this water coming from?” Vegeta asked.

I thought about the geography of the area.  “I think we’re passing under the Harlem River.  I guess whatever pump system they used to have to keep the tunnels dry doesn’t work anymore.”  I didn’t like that thought at all - the weight of all that water above me, stuck in this obviously old and permeable tunnel.

“Hey, Vegeta,” I whispered, remembering what I’d overheard earlier.  “Pelham told Aaliyah he thinks you electrocuted him, and that’s why he got shot.  He told her not to trust you.”

“That wasn’t me!” he replied.  “Why the hell would he think that?”

“Because he was zapped from behind.”

“It still wasn’t me!  It was probably Nappa or that Kale that got all the way down to us, trying to make their way back to the breach.”

“Well, I think you’d better tell them that.  Right now they don’t trust you.”

He scowled at the idea.  “I suppose I will have to.”

The truck stopped at Lexington-53rd St station.  This time we had to transfer down a level, and there was a rolling groan of dismay as each of us that stepped off the stairs onto the platform discovered it was ankle deep in water.  The track was flooded, and row boats scraped along the track edge, waiting to load wounded. We watched Pelham and the others be loaded, and then the rest of us were forced to plunge into chest deep, freezing water.  I sat in the water at the edge of the track, and even that took my breath away. Vegeta jumped in, and popped up again, breathless with the shock of cold. I tried to ease myself in, but there was no good way to ease into water this cold.  I sank off the platform and the water washed to my nipples, flooding my heavy, warm layers, obliterating all their protection, and my breath came in fast, involuntary gasps.

We crossed under the East River that way, half swimming, half walking, fully miserable, and it took forever.  By the time the water started to shallow out, not just me but everyone in the cohort was shivering uncontrollably, teeth chattering.  I could hear a wolf whining endlessly up ahead and was not far off joining its song. I looked at Vegeta, and saw his face set in the same grimace we all wore - one of helpless endurance.   _ If we all don’t die of hypothermia I’ll be surprised _ , I thought.

We reached a station with the mosaic 23rd St-Ely Ave on the wall, and Aaliyah, still dripping wet, directed us up from the platform and down a long passageway and into a hall of turnstiles overgrown with weeds.  The glass dome of the ceiling was smashed in by fallen debris, coated thickly in vines and small trees.  _ Are we under Manhattan? _ I wondered.  We passed by the turnstiles and kept going down another stretch of corridor, angling down until we came to stairs leading down to another island platform.  This one was at least dry. We clambered through another abandoned train before continuing along the line.

We walked for hours.  I was starting to feel like it was the longest and worst night of my life.  Everyone was sore and cold and hungry and scared. Vegeta’s hand was like ice in mine, and the only positive was that he was here, and we were both alive for now.  

The track came up into the open after a station called Church St, and we climbed down a rusted out stairway to street level, then took cover under the elevated track, following it South.  The breeze was cruel when we were already wet. I had not stopped shivering since the swim. 

The city around us was broken but untouched by either survivor or settler; crumbling and tree-choked and utterly silent.  I realized I could see the houses and buildings well after the deep darkness of the underground. 

It was getting close to dawn when the ant trail of evacuees veered away from the tracks and down some deserted, vegetation- and sand-swallowed roads, then through an open space full of rusted machinery.  I saw a partially legible sign, but could make out only one word: Coney. Coney Island? I recognized the name from old folk songs. I took another look at the machinery - amusement park rides.

We made our treacherous way over the rotten remains of a boardwalk and onto a beach.  In the distance a pier still stood strong, and the trail made for it. Something was coming across the water - a small fleet of motorboats hauled up beside the pier and loaded people, then took them away again.

“Where are they going?” I asked.  I couldn’t see anything out in the direction they were headed.  

Vegeta scanned the horizon.  “There  _ is  _ something out there.  It’s hard to see.”

I looked harder, and saw unevenness in the sea and sky - odd geometric shapes closely toned with their surrounds.

“Are those ships?”

“Stealth ships,” said Vegeta.  “Big ones. Quite a remarkable thing for a band of stateless rebels to have access to.”  

The long walk along the sand was the exhausting cherry on the cake.  We made the cover of the pier and fell on the wet sand to wait out turn.  No one was speaking much. We were all too tired and hungry and cold for talk.  When the boats came back we took our seats in the last flotilla off the beach. I was a leaf in the wind at this point, tugged any which way by the tide of Aaliyah’s river.  

As we approached the ships I started to be able to see them better.  They were a dull, pale blue, with a low luster which reflected the surroundings.  Their angles were odd and slanted outwards closer to the water rather than inwards, like you’d expect.  Their wide, twin hulls stood clear of the water, and I supposed there were counter floats under the water to hold the ship up.  Besides the odd shapes, they were almost featureless. The towers had windows, but there were few other windows, so signage, not even a name.

“They’re hard to spot on radar or sonar,” Vegeta said.  “Hard even to see, from a distance. Those raised hulls reduce the amount of water disturbance.”  Then he noticed that Chichi sat next to us again. “How does The Bronx have hold of stealth ships like these?”

“They’re loaned by our friends,” she said.

“Which friends?”

She considered answering.  “I’ll let Aaliyah tell you when you see her.”

Before we even made it there, the first ship was away.  Our boats motored into a cut out at the back of the stern of the second.  Above us was a big space open into the ship. A an orange light flashed briefly, and then chains either side of us started to lift out of the water.  There was a clunk on the bottom of our boat, the whole thing wobbled, and then suddenly our boat was rising out of the water on a massive shelf of steel grill.  When I looked around I saw the other boats lifting up, too, up into the space above.

The shelf clamped into place, and we found our boats in a hold of sorts.  I looked around and saw Pelham being helped off one of the other motorboats by Recoome.  Aaliyah hit the ground running and was out of the hold and elsewhere on the ship within seconds.

I nodded toward Pelham, and Vegeta sighed.

“I suppose I should get this over with.”

We walked over, and Pelham had locked eyes with Vegeta when a blonde woman came charging into the hold and threw herself at Pelham.

“Raddy!” she cried, wrapping arms and legs around him.  Pelham cried out and would have gone down if Recoomme hadn’t been holding him up anyway.

“Launch, no!  Get off me!” he shouted.  She did, looking hurt and confused, but then a gray streak replaced her as a wolf leapt up to put its paws on Pelham’s chest, wagging its tail madly.  It barked once, sharply.

“Raddy.  Raddy, you are alive.”

I stared.  Had that wolf just spoken?  Not with its mouth, but it sounded like the electronically produced voices that the disabled used when they could no longer use their vocal chords and used a neural net instead to speak aloud.  Then I saw that the thing  _ was  _ wearing a neural net, the head set buried in the fur of its unusually bulbous head.

“Get down, Hasky!”

The wolf leapt back.  “You are alive but you are hurt.  I smell blood on your leg.” It immediatly stuck its nose in the wound dressing.

“Ah!  Hasky!”

“Raddy!” the woman cried.  She jumped in between him and the wolf.  “Hasky, you’re hurting him more!”

The wolf’s tail immediately dropped.

“Sorry.  Let me lick it clean for you.”

“That won’t be necessary, Hasky.”

It cocked its head.  “Necessary?”

“I don’t need you to do that.”

“I’m hallucinating,” said Vegeta.

“No, you’re not, that wolf is talking through a neural net,” I told him  “I’m not sure how, because all the tests with animals and neural nets in the past have just produced endless streams of repetitive nonsense.  The language centers in their brains aren’t developed enough - animals can’t think with words.”

“Raddy, did you get shot?” the woman asked, taking his side that Recoome wasn’t supporting.  It was then that I saw that the hair on the other side of her head was dark blue. From this side, she looked like a completely different woman.  The wolf licked his hand.

“Yeah,” Pelham groaned, glancing over at the two of us.  “No thanks to this guy.” Vegeta stepped forward.

“Bulma told me you think I fired on you during the attack,” he said.  “But that’s not true.”

“Sure,” said Pelham, his tone sarcastic.  “I suppose it was a mistake.”

“It wasn’t me at all!  What are you accusing me of?  Do really you think I’d make a green mistake like that?  There were two other Saiyans that got around you, a Nappa and a Kale, after they attacked me and Bulma, your friend Recoome here saw them off.  Isn’t that right, Recoome?”

“He’s right,” Recoome confirmed.  

“See?  It was probably them, trying to rejoin the squad.”

The two men stared at each other.

“Mmm, I guess,” said Pelham.

Vegeta huffed.  “Don’t do me any favors,  _ Raddy _ .”

I started to get angry on Vegeta’s behalf.  “He said he didn’t do it!”

“Okay, okay!  I believe him!”

Vegeta turned, took my hand and kept walking, clearly pissed off by Pelham’s half hearted response.  “Come on, let’s see if there’s any food on board.”

...

The ship was packed.  Every chair and practically every horizontal space was occupied.  At this point I didn’t care if the SSA blew us to kingdom come, as long as we found somewhere to sit and rest before it happened.  The ship was going South, and it was getting steadily warmer. We got our turn to stand in the breakfast line, and were given hot soup, hot tea, and hard cookies.  It wasn’t much, and Vegeta went rather hungry, but it was enough to warm us up and make us sleepy. Spying an empty corner, we took it, laying down on the metal floor between weary Bronxites, some snoring, some talking, some crying.  I didn’t care about the hard floor or my damp, sticky clothes. Just laying my bones down felt like heaven. 

We nestled nose to nose, hands clasped between us.  The world shrank to the few inches between us, and despite being tired we could not close our eyes on each other.  How had this happened? He was so beautiful, so handsome, and I couldn’t believe that in the midst of chaos and danger I had found  _ him _ .  He stared back at me, taking in my face, not looking away.  I felt like I could feel what he was feeling - wonder, surprise, joy - we were mirrors to each other.  I felt a part of my heart that I had never known was there open up, splitting asunder with exaltation. They say you know it when you feel it, and I felt it.  I was falling in love with him, head over heels, high on life, all the cliches. All the cliches were true.

“We made it,” I whispered.

He nodded his head, then reached out a finger to trace over my lips.  “And we’re together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! Some breathing room.


	14. Bermuda - 2144

**CHAPTER FOURTEEN: BERMUDA 2144**

 

I came awake in a panic - Vegeta had sat up with a start.

“What?” he barked.

Chichi was looking down at us, somewhat ruffled.  “Sorry, but I had to wake you,” she explained. “Aaliyah wants to see you on the bridge.”

She led us up the passageways and stairs.  I felt groggy, and when we got to bridge, its windows let me see that it was brightly sunny outside.  I took my coat off, overheating.

Aaliyah was sitting at a map table at the back of the bridge, surrounded by a few of her team.  The rest of those on the bridge were wearing some sort of uniform. I stared at one, trying to identify it, but it was stripped of any insignia or regalia.  They looked mostly of European extraction, but that didn’t mean anything. The were those of European extraction in all three of the world’s superpower states.

“Bulma and Vegeta,” Aaliyah said as we approached.  She looked like crap, and I guessed she hadn’t slept.  I was surprised that Pelham was sitting next to her, injured leg stuck out from the stool, and he didn’t look like he’d had much rest either.  His wife, the blue and blonde haired woman sat close by him, holding his hand. She looked very grave.

“We are currently passing Bermuda,” Aaliyah said.  “You two, Pelham, Launch, and Chichi will take one of the motorboats from the hold and land there.  Pelham can get the treatment he needs for his gunshot wound, and afterwards he will hook you up with Radishya’s brood.  What do you say?”

I was confused.  Bermuda?

“So the Saiya family is there?” Vegeta asked.

Aaliyah’s brows flicked upwards in confirmation.

“Is that safe?  Bermuda, I mean?” I asked.  I didn’t really know much about the place.

“Bermuda is a good place to lie low.  It has no strategic importance to the SSA, and it’s largely depopulated and economically devastated.  No one pays much attention to anything that happens out here anymore, short of an invasion by the EAU or the EE.  Once Pelham has delivered you to Radishya, Chichi will let us know, and we will swing past at some point to pick the other three up, assuming you don’t decide you’d rather join us?”

“And where would we be joining you at?” Vegeta asked.

“It’s still a little early to say,” Aaliyah replied, with a ghost of a smile.  “I will leave the surprise a little longer.”

“I’m not sure I want to go on a boat ride with someone who thinks I electrocuted him from behind,” Vegeta said, looking at Pelham.

Pelham sighed.  “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you,” he said with a smile.  “I shouldn’t have assumed the worst of you when there were other possible culprits.  Aaliyah convinced me I was being an ass, letting my prejudices rule me. It’s not your fault that the other Vegeta’s I’ve known were pricks.”

Vegeta grinned.  “I will not argue with Aaliyah - you  _ are  _ an ass.”

...

We went ashore as planned, Launch steering the boat to a rocky beach surrounded by a churn of turquoise water.  

I couldn’t help studying Launch.  Or staring and being nosy, more accurately.  She was beautiful, but it was not a symmetrical beauty by any shot.  The arch of one of her eyes was high and wide, giving that side of her face a look of innocence.  The other arch was low and quirked upwards, making that side of her face look sly and knowing. The overall impression was one of permanent sarcastic amusement.

“I’m a chimera,” she said suddenly, not even looking at me.

“Sorry, are you talking to me?”

“You seemed so curious,” she said, and I had the feeling that the permanent sarcasm was not just an involuntary expression.  “That’s why I look like I do. I’m two people for the price of one.”

“Oh.  Chimera are rare, aren’t they?”

“There’s been more than one in my family.”

“Really?  How many?”

She pointed to the blonde side of her.  “Well, for instance, there’s me.” Then she pointed to the other side of her face.  “And my sister!” she finished with a bright smile.

“Oh.”  For a second it was as if her entire face had transformed into another person.  “N-Nice to meet you both.”

Pelham burst out laughing.  “She’s teasing you, Bulma!”

I laughed, turning red, embarrassed to have entertained the notion that the two halves of Launch were separate people.

“She does have a split personality though,” Pelham added.

“Raddy!”

“Nice Launch and Nasty Launch.”

She reached back and slapped his thigh, luckily not his injured one.  “ _ Babe! _ ” she snarled.

“Sorry, I forgot, we don’t mention Nasty Launch outside the bedroom!”

The three of us laughed, and even Vegeta smiled, but I was intrigued to see that Chichi looked uncomfortable, and blushed.  It seemed that the gun-toting telepath was not a fan of ribald jokes.

We had left the assault weapons behind, as it was felt that they were not a good look for the sleepy island.  I did wonder if Pelham and the others were packing handguns, though. Vegeta had complained that he no longer had his, confiscated when we’d been plucked from the Harlem pool.

“Why laughing?” asked Hasky in her electronic voice, wagging her tail again.

“Just human jokes, Hasky,” Pelham said, giving her ruff a good scratch.  I had been surprised when the wolf had jumped on board with us. Pelham told me that she had insisted.

The wolf looked between Pelham and Launch.  “It is true that sometimes Launch is nice and sometimes nasty.  How is this funny?”

Launch turned red.  “It is also true that having a talking wolf as a friend is  _ sometimes  _ a wonderful thing.”

Hasky wagged her tail harder.  “Thank you.”

“Hey, I’m going to take this thing off you,” said Pelham, reaching for Hasky’s collar and neural net.  The wolf stepped back, slipping out of his grasp.

“Why?”

“Well, are you going to remember not to talk when we’re on the island?  Huh? A talking wolf is one of those secrets we don’t want the rest of the world knowing about.  And you’re not very good at keeping quiet at times.”

Reluctantly Hasky stepped forwards and allowed him to take off the neural net, and unhook it from her collar.

Hasky whined and cocked her head.

“I think we’d better leave the collar on,” he said.  “People will think you’re a stray without one. This way it looks like you’ve got an owner.”

The wolf huffed and turned away, giving him her back.

“That’s just how the world works,” he said.  “It’s not set up with wolfkin in mind.”

Launch put us in on a tiny arc of pink sand, and we dragged the boat up into a narrow passage between the rocks and helped Pelham out.  He looked a bit gray in the face by then, but was still hale enough to complain loudly as Vegeta and Launch maneuvered him up the grassy bank to the dirt track.  

It was very mild.  We had all stripped our coats, and I carried mine and Vegeta’s.  My feet were now steaming like dumplings in the damp snow boots. 

There were downed trees along the path, and in some places the path was eroded, like the place had been hit by a cyclone and never cleaned up.  We took a guess at the fastest way to a road, down the drive of a house that looked rather forgotten about, and were successful. Then we made terrible time along the road going West - the direction of town, according to Pelham.  He hopped along, needing frequent rests, but we were saved by an ancient bus. When it stopped I wondered what was up, but then the driver’s window rolled down to reveal an actual human driver.

“Do yous need a bus to tha horse-spittle?”

“The what?”  Vegeta spoke for all of us, I think.

“The horspittle.  Your bye looks like he needs a docta!”

We boarded, paying for the tickets with Vegeta’s incognito wristband - our only source of money.  The driver looked at Hasky with a certain amount of fear, but Launch leaned down and gave the wolf a kiss on the face.

“She’s a very well behaved girl,” she assured him.  Hasky looked askance at Launch.

 The houses we passed along the way were a bizarre mash up of styles - spanish villa, English cottage, early 21st century modernist, hurricane-shuttered concrete monstrosities, but nearly all of them were run down.  The yards of many were overgrown, the jungle nibbling around their edges, attempting to devour the buildings back into the natural landscape. We saw a few people out on mopeds, or walking the street, and no one seemed to be in any hurry.  

The driver dropped us right outside the hospital.

“Horspittle, thank you very much!” he said.

Pelham was taken up by the nurses in the emergency room, and Launch went with him as he was wheelchaired into the ward.  Vegeta, Chichi, and I were left to plan out the next order of business, which was of course food. The receptionist directed us to walk around the other other side of the marina into the downtown area to find cafes and restaurants. I was sweating by the time we made it downtown.  My snow boots were getting some odd looks, as was Vegeta’s obviously military camo pants and boots, not to mention the wolf padding at our side.

We settled very quickly on the first place we came to, an eccentric looking place painted purple inside and out, and gorged ourselves on crab chowder and baked potatoes.  Hasky was unimpressed at being forced to stay outside, especially as she was forced to share the verandah with a yapping poodle, but she was happy at least with her bowl of chowder.  Vegeta’s skepticism over the crab quickly turned to unfettered snarfing, and Chichi giggled before catching herself and looking guilty at me.

“So, you’re our link back to the fleet?” I asked.

“Ah huh.”

“Where are they now?”

“Uh, somewhere in the Atlantic is all I could say.”

What a handy gift.

Vegeta paused to run a napkin over his chin to wipe up chowder.

“How many of your family have this ability?” he asked.

“Most of them.”

“How many is that?”

“Oh…”  She seemed reluctant to say.  “About twenty.”

“How old are you?” I asked.  She seemed very shy and quite nervous of us.

“Twenty four,” she replied, which was older than I had thought.

“Have you helped Aaliyah for long?”

“Since she’s been in office.  Before that I helped out with the previous Mayor, but mostly I worked in the nursery.”

In the  _ nursery _ .  I felt my eyebrows rising in disbelief.

“You handle an automatic weapon well for someone who works in a nursery,” Vegeta said.

Chichi smiled, blushing.  “Thank you. I was quite good in basic training, and I took more combat training when they announced that there was an invasion brewing.  They like to use us Kings on missions. I figured I might be asked.”

I also took the opportunity to ask her about the wolfkin, while Hasky was out of earshot, though maybe I misjudged, because outside Hasky’s ears perked up and swivelled towards us.

“I get that these...talking wolves are some sort of genetic mutation,” I said.  “But how did wolves end up in The Bronx in the first place?”

“They were here all along,” Chichi explained.  “In the zoo. A lot of the zoo animals died straight away, but some didn’t.  The wolves changed quite early on. Our ancestors killed off the ones that weren’t clever, because they were a dangerous nuisance.”

I could see why that would be.  “But the clever wolves were useful?”

“That’s right!  They can do things like herd management - they take care of the sheep flocks all by themselves.”

“Without eating them?”

“Well, do human shepherds eat their flocks when they feel peckish?  They’re cleverer than that.” 

“The wolfskins that Aaliyah and Pelham wear, are they the pelts of the old, dumb wolves?”

“Oh, no!  When a Wolfkin dies, they can gift their pelt to a good friend.  It was a tradition started by one of the Wolfkin chiefs a long time ago, as his best friend was a human, who always got cold in winter, while the wolves didn’t feel it due to their thick coats.  He told his friend that when he died, he could have his coat to keep him warm and remember him by.”

_ Ew _ .

“That’s fucking creepy,” said Vegeta.

“Is it?” Chichi asked.  “It’s considered a great honor to be told you will receive the pelt of a Wolfkin.  Pelham and Aaliyah have theirs because they were best friends with a wolfkin who died.”

We discussed where we would stay that night, and decided that there wasn’t enough money on Vegeta’s wristband to get us any official accommodation.  Pelham and Launch would likely need most of the rest to pay hospital bills. 

“Did you see how many abandoned houses there were on the way into town?” Vegeta said.  “I don’t think it’s worth paying for somewhere to stay.” 

So instead we picked up groceries at a supermarket and walked out of town to the South East, looking for a quiet road and a house with no others close by.  It was not hard to find. 

Down a neglected looking lane past the marina, with a handful of mansion sized houses on it, all very quiet and unlived in, we selected a house on the waterfront.  The driveway had been reduced to a pathway by the creeper vines, bamboo, and trees that had taken over, and the house was completely private from is neighbors. Plants grew out of the cracks in the pavers, and the one-time swimming pool was now a sunken swamp full of frogs and mosquito larvae.  The door was locked, but Vegeta broke the lock with a single, well aimed kick. 

Inside, the place was fairly well preserved.  All the windows were still intact, most of them shuttered against storms, but after opening the shutters the place was light and airy feeling, decorated in the gold and beige that had been popular a generation ago.  A ventilation system still whirred softly, probably powered by solar, and the water was still running, even heated thanks to the solar panels. It still smelled faintly of mold, but not too badly, and the beds felt dry.  There was even linen and blankets still in the cupboards.

“It looks like someone planned to come back here one day,” I observed.  “I wonder what happened?” I knew the Bermuda had once been a popular holiday destination, even after the war, though perhaps not as popular as it once had been.

“There’s been trouble out here in the past,” said Vegeta.  “Many of the residents and landowners thought that Bermuda should be part of the European and African Union, because of its strong ties to Old Britain.  The uprisings were put down fairly brutally. I guess after that, it lost its appeal. Besides, it doesn’t seem like there’s much out here.”

How did he know that?  I guessed that those in the military got a glimpse into suppressed histories.

We explored the house, picking out bedrooms amongst the six, then wandered down the garden to the beach before coming back up and eating the sandwiches we had picked up for dinner.

“Can I have the wristband?” Chichi asked.  “I’m going to go back to the hospital and tell Pelham and Launch where we are.  They’ll probably need money for dinner.”

“Will you be okay, walking back alone?” I asked.

“I’ll take Hasky with me.”

Vegeta handed the wristband over, and then we were alone.  And I was suddenly shy.

“Beer?” he suggested.  We’d put some in the fridge, though it wasn’t cold yet, as we’d only just turned its power back on at the wall.

“Okay.”

I investigated the items on a small corner unit of the sunken lounge.  It had an old-fashioned wristband charging station, a vase with a pen in it, and a book with a leather cover, tooled with a paisley design.  I opened the book, expecting one of those pretentious old fashioned guest books that people like my grandmother kept in her house, but it was a diary of sorts.  The first pages was a list of company names, a note to buy a going away present for “Hope and Gary” and an underlined note to “Call Brian before he leaves!”

The next page was an entry.

_ Neither Katherine or Beatrice are coming for the holidays.  Both say they can’t afford the time off, even if we take the boat and pick them up.  It’s such a shame that those two put their careers ahead of the family. It’s not like either of us will be around forever.  We bought this place as a retreat for them, too, but it seems like they don’t often feel the need to retreat. I just hope that when they finally have their own children they remember us. _

The third and final page merely said,  _ The boat failed its warrant of fitness again!  Tyler wants to go back to the mainland to get it fixed this time.  It seems these local cowboys only know how to do a temporary fix-it job!  Looks like we won’t be spending the holidays here either! _

It was dated the 10th of June, 2113.

“It seems as if this place has been abandoned since around the day I was born, if this is anything to go by,” I said as Vegeta joined me and handed me the beer.

“What’s that?” he asked, looking over my shoulder.

“A diary.”

“A paper diary?”

“Yes.”

“Are you two hundred years old?”

“Ha ha!  Some people still use paper diaries, you know.”

“Historical reenactors?”

“Well.  In their own way, I guess.”  I thought of the few people I knew that did still use paper notebooks, who claimed they liked the feel of writing by hand in their artisan, handbound, parchment or linen paper, hundred-dollar-a-pop notebooks.  All people from my grandmother's circle in Chicago. “It’s a rich person’s game.”

I took one of the pens from the vase and wrote “Bulma’s Diary” across the top of the first clean page.  My handwriting was atrocious and slow from lack of practice. Then I picked up the beer and took some long swallows.  It still retained some of the cold from the supermarket.

“You haven’t made an entry,” he said.  “Surely you’ve got something to say about the last few days?”

I put the bottle down.  “True.” So I wrote:

_ Dear Diary, _

_ I met the most amazing guy the other day.  We went on the run from the government together and could have died several times.  I knew him when we were young, but now that he’s all grown up he’s realllllllly hot. _

He chuckled over my shoulder.  I asked myself if I was brave enough to write what occured to me next.  I could always pass it off as a joke, right?

_ Diary, I think he IS THE ONE!!! _

I looked up at him, expecting to see him smiling, but instead he was staring.

“I’m the one?”

Blood rushed to my face.

“It’s only a joke diary entry,” I said.

He stayed staring at it a long moment, setting his beer on the cabinet.  He gripped it so hard his fingers were white.

“Vegeta?”  I was starting to feel worried.  “What’s wrong?”

He wrapped his arms around me and hugged me tight to him.  “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” I said into his shoulder.

“ _ You’re _ the one, Bulma.  I just don’t think I deserve you.”

I didn’t like this self-doubting talk.  I wondered what event or mission had done this to him.  Something from his past had caused him to lose some belief in himself as a good person that I know had been there when he was a teenager.

“Well, I think  _ I  _ deserve  _ you _ , so you’d better get over it,” I said, and pulled his head down to kiss him.

At first I thought he wasn’t going to reciprocate, but then he snapped out of whatever gripped him and kissed me back, gathering me against him so tightly that my feet left the ground and I don’t think he even noticed.

“Hmm!” I said, half in alarm and half in sheer gratification.  His tongue plunged into my mouth, and I could feel him breathing hard; ragged emotional breaths against my cheek.  He swayed and let go of me with one hand to catch himself on the cabinet.

“I can’t believe we made it,” he said, breaking the kiss.  “I can’t believe we’re at the end, and we’re both still alive - I was sure one or both of us was going to die last night.”

“I was afraid of that, too,” I said.  I stepped back. I noticed how tired he was, how tired I was.  It was making him emotional. I could smell the stress of the last eighteen or so hours on him.  We needed more sleep, but first there was something I needed more than sleep. I took his hand and led him back to the bedroom I had picked out, linens fresh on the bed.  As soon as I had the door closed I plucked his undershirt from his pants and pulled it up - he got the picture pretty fast. He whipped it off over his head and then lunged at me, pulling the loose linen shirt off me without bothering to unbutton it.  He paused to kiss me, hands dragging down over my breasts then gripping my hips tight before undoing the drawstring of the pants. I let them fall and stepped out of them, then attacked the waistband of his camo pants, the belt, buttons, and zipper - damn their sturdy construction!  He shucked them off, and his boots, too, and then we stood before each other in our underwear.

This wasn’t like the night before, in the dark, under the covers.  The sun was still up, and Vegeta the soldier, the man, was exposed to me.  He was gorgeous. 

“Come here, woman,” he said, his voice raspy with emotion..  My own throat felt tight, with a piercing joy near to sorrow.  I stepped into his arms, reaching up to put my arms around his neck and kiss him, feeling the relief of his skin against mine, enjoying it, glorying in it.  He kissed my mouth, then my jaw, leaning down to kiss my throat. Tingling serpents of arousal rolled their way down my skin from his lips. When he touched my breast I moaned and pressed into his hand.  

This wasn’t like it had been with other men either, and it wasn’t just that I wasn’t drunk.  What had those other men been to me? The best men I could find on short notice, temporary stand ins for something I didn’t have.  And now I had it, and I felt how  _ meaningless  _ that had all been.

He lowered me onto the bed and hovered over me, my legs falling open in invitation.  He pulled my bra straps down, but I undid it, wanting it to be gone already, then my head flopped to the mattress, my eyes rolled back as he softly kneaded my breasts, rolled his thumbs over my nipples, plucked them gently, leaned over me and licked each in turn, the sweeps of his hands unrelenting as he went on and on.

“Ah, oh…”  I was trying not to profane the moment with inappropriate language, but  _ fuck me! _  I felt wetness slick me, and I tried to rub my thighs together to ease the excitement building there, but he stood between them, and my legs clamped around his.  I reached down and caught the band of his briefs, tugging them out of the way. He relinquished one hand from pleasuring me to pull them entirely down, and I gripped that thick shaft and felt it hardening even more in my hand as I played with it.  He pulled away. 

“Vegeta!” I mewled, but he was still between my legs, standing at the edge of the bed while I lay spread for him.  He knelt and pressed his fingers into the wetness of my panties, and I moved towards him, involuntarily. 

“God,” he moaned, and then he pulled them aside, his tongue, lips, and the stubble of his chin sending shudders of pure sensation rolling through me, as he worshipped my pussy as much as he had my breasts.  The pleasure was building up in me, and when he added a finger, then two fingers into the mix, stretching me, I knew I wouldn’t make it much longer.

“Vegeta!  Vegeta!” I begged.  “Get inside me!”

He raised his head and stood, and in that moment I reached down and whipped the panties off.  Before I could lower my feet again he caught my knees and pressed them back, laying his weight over me, his feet planted on the floor, dick laying heavy on my slit.

“Okay,” he said, panting.  “Okay.”

He pulled his hips back, the head of him sliding back to my entrance, then in he slid, the head gliding in effortlessly, then the rest following with a sensation of fullness that had me groaning with him.  I swear I could feel every inch of him opening me. His mouth was open in that expression of pleasure that looked like pain, our eyes locked together, his dark brown eyes with those golden flecks the most enthralling thing I had ever seen.

He pushed in and out of me slowly, dragging the sensation out, building it in me until I couldn’t help crying out with each stroke.  I tried to meet his thrusts with my own, but his grip on my legs pinned me, until at last his resolve broke. He let go of my legs, collapsing on top of me, pounding faster, meeting the furious pace I demanded.  He found one of my breasts with his hand, the nipple like a rock against his palm as he rolled it. The touch sent me over the edge, crying out, convulsing, pulsing around him until he fell apart himself, groaning, shuddering, the pulsing of his seed into me setting off aftershocks of pleasure that went on and on.

Both panting, he pushed me further onto the bed and lay on top of me, still conjoined.  We lay like that for some time, sharing small caresses, my arms around him, his face buried in my neck, his weight almost too much for me, but still somehow perfect.  I was in a state of disbelief. In a buzz of post-ecstatic high I hadn’t known existed until then. Nothing in my experience had matched this, and what was weirdest was the ache in my heart - a good ache - like it had been broken in two and then stitched back together to make a bigger whole with Vegeta’s.  I didn’t dare say that to him. I only hoped he felt it too.

At last he raised his head.

“If I’m not careful, I’m going to fall asleep on top of you.”

We parted just long enough to get under the sheet and blanket, and then I rolled into his side, resting my head on his shoulder and wrapped an arm around his chest.

...

We both awoke in the dark to the sound of voices.

“Mind the door frame!”

“Ow!  You just walked me right into it!”

“Is this a bedroom?”

“Not that one, that’s Vegeta and Bulma’s.”  Chichi.

“Can’t we just pick the closest one?”  Pelham’s voice.

“Only if you want to share a bed with those two,” said Launch.

“I’m game if you are, babe.”

Chichi gasped, but Launch laughed.  

“You can’t be in that much pain if you’re still making jokes!”

Vegeta and I laughed, too, as silently as we could.  It wasn’t a particularly funny joke, but our mood was still so high that everything felt better than it was.  His arm was still around my shoulders, and he stroked me as the sounds of the others finding their beds in the dark receded.

“I could never have imagined a Raditz being married,” he whispered.  “I guess this is what that looks like.”

“Do the Saiyans at the WRU not get to marry?”

“No.”  He snorted.  “Definitely not.  We’re not even supposed to have relationships, officially.”

“Can you imagine…a Vegeta married?”

He squeezed me gently.  “Maybe once I couldn’t. Now I can.”

That gave me the courage to say the most ridiculous thing I had ever said to a man.  My overjoyed heart could no longer hold it inside.

“Vegeta Tarble Two,” I whispered, “I love you.”  And it was out there, so stupid, so naive, because I was thirty one years old, and I should have really known by then that love didn’t blossom in a matter of days, but at that moment I felt it to be true.

Vegeta flinched.  Then he rolled over into me, bringing his face close to mine.  It seemed like he was going to speak, but then there was a long moment of silence.

“You’re too good for me, Bulma Briefs,” he said at last.

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to prove myself worthy of you.”

Before I could question that, he kissed me, soft, questing, and insistent.  I melted, my heat for him blooming again. We touched each other, slowly, all over, fingers and mouths canvassing each other’s bodies.  I marvelled again to feel those muscles under his skin, ran my hands through his hair, kissed his eyelids, teased his ear lobe with my teeth.  He made me shiver with a trailing finger down my flank, kissed the sides on my breasts, licked my belly button, stroked the insides of my thighs.  It was a kind of exploration of body I had never known before - curiosity, experiment - I wasn’t sure what it was, but it was the most intimate thing I had ever shared with a person, and I was sure that only the dark and the fact that I had laid my heart open without having it rejected made me brave enough for this.

I giggled with ticklishness when he kissed the bottom of my feet and then writhed as he licked back up the inside of my leg.  He laughed, too, when he teased me with one finger tip, spreading the wetness from my opening around my clitoris with a featherlight touch that had me arching into the touch with gasps of desperation.  We made love, stealthily, trying not to make the furniture squeak, trying to keep the gasps quiet, until Vegeta silenced my moans with his mouth, me thrashing under him, bucking, milking him, the hair on my body raised by tingling washes of release that rolled out from where we were joined.

“How are you so perfect for me?” I asked when we were done, and languid with spent sensation.

“Conceived in a test tube,” he said.  “Designed for your pleasure.”

We both laughed, our bodies bouncing against each other, resurrecting the ghost of my orgasm.

“Does this seem real to you?  A week ago, I was in Ithaca, thinking maybe I should get a cat because I was so lonely.”

“A cat?”

I stroked the back of his head.  “But now I don’t need a cat because I’ve got you.”

“Better than a cat!” he said.  “High praise. But I wouldn't mind a cat.  Even if I have you.”

“We can have a cat,” I said, and then realized the implications of what I’d just said.  I snorted. “That’s what I mean though. A few days ago I had nothing but my work. Now I have you.”

“Last night I thought one or both of us was going to die,” said Vegeta more seriously.  “That we both lived, and that I’m here, now, with you… I’m the luckiest guy in the world.  It makes me think there is a god, after all. Or else, the devil is making a very long joke.”

I laughed. “What would the punchline be?”

“I don’t think either of us wants to know.”

...

Later still, I woke a second time, thinking I had heard something, maybe a yap from Hasky outside, but I couldn’t be sure I hadn’t dreamt it.  In any case, she wasn’t making any more sounds. I needed to use the bathroom, anyway. I could hear the sound of one of the others creeping down the hall trying not to wake the rest of us.  I slipped out of bed and hunted around for my shirt and pulled it on, but before I could get up, the door to the bedroom creaked open. I froze, expecting Chichi or Launch to have picked the wrong room in the dark, but it was a figure in black, another black, gleaming object held on front of them.  For a fraction of a second of mind-overruling terror I couldn’t do anything, and then I reached out next to me and grabbed Vegeta’s foot. He woke with a jerk.

“No!” he yelled.

“Stay the fuck down!” a harsh female voice ordered.

Suddenly the rest of the house erupted into noise, voices from all over the house were barking orders and the others were awoken, screaming and shouting.  I heard Chichi’s scream, a crash and the shocking retort of a gunshot inside the house, and my heart was pounding so hard I was sure it was going to explode.

Vegeta leapt to his feet and I followed suit.

“Easy!” the woman barked, the weapon trained on me.  “Hands on your head or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”  I looked towards the window, the only escape as the woman blocked the doorway.

“Just try it,” she said.

Figures in black fatigues marched us out onto the weedy patio at gunpoint, and forced us to kneel in front of the swimming pool.  Pelham was dragged, naked except for his underwear and bandage. Launch was beside him, screaming filthy curses at our captors. Chichi was carried out between two soldiers, struggling the whole way, a third soldier following, nursing his jaw.  On the other side of the pool was a pile of gray wolf fur.

I felt sick with shock and fear.  How had everything gone so wrong? How had they found us?

One of them stepped forward and turned on an electric lantern.  For a moment I lost my grip on place and time as I took in the face of the soldier.  It was Bardock’s face, but all wrong.

“Vegeta, you can get up now,” he said.  “And go put some pants on!”

I looked on in confusion as Vegeta slowly got to his feet.  He looked absolutely ill. I wondered what this meant.

“Fuck!” yelled Pelham.  “Fucking whoreson spy!”

I wondered who he was yelling at.  Vegeta rounded his shoulders and walked back into the house, no one stopped him.

“What is going on?” I asked, my voice near hysterical.

The woman who had me at gunpoint laughed, and by the light of the moon and the lantern I could see then that she was a fully grown Fasha of some variety, way scarier looking than any other Fasha I had met, with her short hair, army fatigues, and semi-automatic in her hands.

“What do you think’s going on, babe?  You got played!”

Laughter broke out amongst the soldiers.  I looked around, seeing a Kale, a Nappa and a Toma, a Caulifla, another Raditz, and another Saiyan I didn’t even recognize.  The first speaker was a Turles, I realized. 

“Get these people cuffed,” he said.  When Toma tried to cuff Pelham, Pelham shook him off, but soon found the barrel of a machine gun pressed very hard into his head.  He was forced face down onto the ground.

“You fucking morons,” said Pelham.  “Don’t you realize you’re slaves! Just doing your owner’s bidding!”

“You’re the moron, buddy,” said Toma.  “We’re heroes. You’re the selfish coward that ran.”

Then Vegeta returned from the house in his camo pants and undershirt and came to stand beside Turles.  And only then did I get it. 

I was forced face down on the pavers, eyes locked on Vegeta in disbelief, waiting for him to say something, to stop this, to explain that what I thought was happening wasn’t happening.  But he wouldn’t even look at me.

“Vegeta!” I begged, but I couldn’t say anything more.  My heart couldn’t have lied to me like that!  _ He  _ couldn’t have lied to me like that!  He turned his back on me, looking away from the four of us pinned to the ground.

Turles clapped him on the back.  “Well done, Sarge. That was one hell of a chase you led us on.  Who’d have thought it would end here?”

“How did you even find me?” Vegeta asked.  “I thought my monitor had been fried. I didn’t know how I was going to make contact.”  Already his voice was starting to sound far away. Blood was rushing through my ears, the whooshing, frantic pumping of a heart trying not to die of betrayal.

“It was, but there was a back up in your ‘untrackable’ wristband.  It was broadcasting the whole time!”

Fasha pulled my arms roughly back to cuff me, and I yelped.  Vegeta whirled around. 

“Don’t hurt her!”

“I wasn’t!” says Fasha.  “I was using reasonable force.”

“Then be more reasonable.  She’s a civilian, and no threat to you.”

“Ooh, I think someone got attached to the target.”

“Shut your mouth, Fasha!”  The conversation washed over me.  I was in hell, hyperventilating, starting to cry.

“Urgh, god!” Fasha muttered under her breath, binding me with marginally gentler hands.  “Touchy motherfucker!”

I wanted to pass out.  I wanted to not be here in my body, my body that had just lain with that man!  But it stayed stubbornly conscious.

A man came striding down the overgrown driveway in perfectly clean fatigues, with a few others at his heels.  As he approached Turles and Vegeta, I realized I recognized him. He was a little older, still exceptionally handsome, but I knew him from somewhere.

The Saiyans saluted him, except for Vegeta.

“I trust you have settled things here?” the man asked.

There was an awkwards silence, and then Turles replied, “Yes, Major Zarbon, sir!”

I knew I recognized him!  He was the one that had carried Vegeta away all those years ago.  And now what? How had things come to this situation?

Zarbon cocked his head and came towards Vegeta.

“Struck dumb, Sergeant?”

Vegeta glowered at the Major.  “This mission was...not what I was expecting.”

Zarbon smiled with narrowed eyes.  “Yes, I’m sure. And we’ll speak about that later.  In the meantime, try and look a little happier about achieving your objective.  It brings down morale.”

“Sorry, Major.  I’m merely in pain.”

Zarbon glanced at the bandage on his arm.  “Yes, I heard you took a bullet from one of the sentries behind the Bronx line.  And then had to fight your own team inside The Bronx. But I’m sure it’s nothing that your training didn’t prepare you for.  I trust it won’t keep you out of action? You’ll miss out on the morning’s bughunt.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Navy and Marines are surrounding the island right now.  We will begin our sweep of the island for the wild Saiyans shortly.”

I whimpered, afraid I might actually vomit.  We’d been totally gamed. I had fallen - we all had fallen - hook, line, and sinker for  _ Vegeta’s  _ deception.

“You won’t catch any!” said Pelham.

Zarbon turned, taking in the sight of the four of us.  “Really? It’s not such a large island, and even if they got on a boat or plane this instant, it would be too late.  Our blockade is fairly comprehensive.”

“You won’t because there aren’t any Saiyans here!” Pelham announced triumphantly.  “You all fell for Aaliyah’s ploy!”

“What do you mean?  What ploy?”

Now everyone was staring at Pelham.  “We were suspicious of that short, vicious bastard  _ Vegeta _ , so she sent me out here with them to babysit while the rest got away.  Radishya and the family aren’t here!”

Zarbon was silent, his jaw set with swift rage.  But I was mortified. Relieved, but mortified. I had fallen for Vegeta’s act, but Pelham and Aaliyah hadn’t!  I was a fool! A heartsick, blind fool!

“If you are bluffing, you will soon be found out,” said Zarbon.  “If you are not bluffing...then you likely know where the wild Saiyans really are.  Black Squad - take them back to the jet. I want them back at Weapons Research, ready for interrogation in twelve hours or less.  And that wolf had better not be dead.”

I was pulled to my feet and marched past Zarbon and Vegeta, but as I approached them, Vegeta turned again, keeping his back to me.

“I hate you!” I screamed, pouring everything into the sentiment, every truth of the word.  “You traitor! You...! I  _ hate  _ you!” 

I couldn’t go on.  My throat hurt and I was choking on tears, and Fasha was dragging me onwards without pause.

Pelham, Launch, Chichi, and I were stuffed in the back of a beat up police van.  They all look terrified, even Pelham, though he was still mad as hell. I dropped my eyes, unable to look at them in my humiliation.

“I’m so sorry,” I managed to say.  “I never thought Vegeta would be capable of doing something like that!  When he was a boy he-”

“That guy isn’t the same Vegeta that you knew as a boy,” Pelham told me bluntly.  “I’d bet anything he’s a Mercenary line Vegeta, bred for military use.”

“But his eyes!  They had the markers!”

Fasha and Toma were busy chaining us to the chassis of the van, and Fasha snorted.

“Say goodnight, traitor,” Toma said and injected Pelham in the neck with something that must have been sedative, because within moments his eyes slid closed and he slumped on the bench.  Launch screamed and began thrashing, trying to get over to him.

“What did you do?  What did you fucking do my my husband?”

“Do you think we should sedate her, too?” Toma asked Fasha.

“I’d say so,” replied Fasha, covering her ears, and soon Launch was passed out, too, half lying on the old vinyl bench seat.

“You ladies can avoid the same fate if you behave,” Toma told Chichi and I.

“Traitor Raditz is right, though,” Fasha said as she fetched down some gaffer tape from an overhead storage shelf.  “Our Sarge is no used-up battery boy. And he was not too pleased when they cut those markers in his irises with the lasers.”

“Who is he, then?” I asked in dawning horror.

“Vegeta Black, of the legendary Black Squadron.” 

_ A stranger.  A complete stranger! _

“Legendary?” Chichi asked.  “They can’t be that legendary if I’ve never heard of them.”

Fasha looked delighted.  “That’s because by the time people have heard of us, they’ll never get to tell the tale!  We’re the best squad in Special Reconnaissance!”

She taped up Chichi’s mouth, then mine, and the two soldiers got out, while I desperately fought the panic, and tried to not be sick.

Special Reconnaissance.  We were walking dead.

...

We were transferred to a massive jetcopter at the airport - one of several on the tarmac.  Launch and Raditz were dumped in the back, with Hasky who was muzzled, which hopefully meant she was alive.  Chichi and I huddled next to them with our arms cuffed behind us and chained to the wall. We couldn’t see out of the windows, which were all further forward in the seated area full of soldiers, and I was wearing only the linen shirt, and freezing.

I cried for a while, tears of plain terror.  For then at least, I was too scared to feel the betrayal or to think of anything except how much I didn’t want to die.  But after an hour or so of that, the fear receded enough to let me think. I leaned down to my shoulder and began scrubbing my cheek against my shoulder, trying to catch the edge of the gaffer tape on the shirt.  It took a while before a corner started to roll, and I carefully dragged it over and over across my shoulder, trying to get it to stick harder to that than my skin. Chichi noticed what I was doing and copied me. It took time, but eventually I was able to roll it out enough to poke my tongue out of the corner of my mouth, then used my tongue to push it free around my lips.

“Chichi, look at me.” I whispered as soon as I was able to talk.

She did, and I leaned over, grabbing the rolled corner of her gag with my teeth and pulling.  Then she obligingly pulled my gag the rest of the way off with her teeth. It was eye-watering, but we’d both been crying anyway.

“Do you know the place we’re going?” Chichi asked.  It was so loud in the back of the jetcopter that there was no chance of us being heard.

“A bit.  It’s part research unit, part military camp, and part prison, I think.”

She started crying again.  “Bulma, please don’t tell them about me!  I don’t want to end up dissected.”

“I won’t,” I agreed, but I had little faith that my silence would be enough to stop Chichi’s secret being found out.  Vegeta knew, after all. “Chichi, did you let the others know about what happened to us?”

She nodded.  “Straight away.  My dad and cousins are freaking out.  They want Aaliyah to turn the boat around and come get me, but she won’t let them.”

“Are you in constant communication with them?”

“No, I have to look for it.  But my family are right there when I do.”

I asked her a question that had only occured to me now.  “I don’t understand why Pelham and Launch and you would put yourselves in this trap, if you really thought Vegeta might betray you?”

“We weren’t supposed to get caught.  We didn’t know if Vegeta was a spy or not.  The plan was to abandon you guys for a few days and see what happened - if you would run or if you’d be picked up by the military.  If you stayed, we were going to rejoin you, then send word to the others. But they wouldn’t keep Chief Pelham in the hospital, and they turned him out so late at night… We figured we’d come back to the house, sleep for a bit and then leave you in the morning.  We didn’t think the military could be here this fast.”

I thought about Vegeta’s black wristband.  Every purchase he made. Or maybe it had been on beacon mode all along?  Probably, that was it. The military had known where we were every step of the way.  I thought about his being shot by the sentry - the sentries must have mistaken us for spies for the other side.  And then Vegeta’s quick reappearance, with his arm so nicely treated, his full uniform and antibiotics - they had patched him up and set him on his mission again, letting us “escape”, and it had all been so believable to me.  The convenient gaps in his memory made sense - he would never be able to recall details of a life he’d never lived! And I’d so easily accepted his explanations about the reconditioning - because I trusted a few golden specks in some dark brown eyes!  I had been the fool, the target, the idiot living my life in the open with a known connection to Radishya, that would lead Special Reconnaissance to the last remaining free Saiyans. Well, I hadn’t done that. But I had delivered them one Saiyan deserter, a talking wolf, and a telepath.

Vegeta Black!  

Hatred roared inside me, trying to cover up the screaming agony of telling him I loved him, of each intimacy we’d shared, of the sweet words that I now realized were poison!  Why had he done this to me? Had he seduced me to keep me on the hook? Or had he taken his queues from me, playing along as it seemed to be what was expected from him?

Vegeta  _ Black!  _  Where the hell was Vegeta  _ Tarble Two? _

...

_ “Now, is there any value in me answering that question?” Zarbon asks.  “Not that I’d tell you, anyway, but are you sure you really want to know?” _

_ The nausea got the better of me and I vomited unexpectedly in my own lap.  I stared stupidly at the sharply reeking regurgitated soup soaking into my coveralls _

_ “Oh, god!  Cui, go call for a cleaning crew.” _

_ The ugly lieutenant exited, and Zarbon dragged his seat to the furthest part of the room from me. _

_ “I think we’re about done here, anyway,” he tells me.  “Unless you have any more conversations with the little Bronx girl to disclose?” _

_ I shake my head.  I have spilled practically all, including my lunch. _

_ “No more lurid detail to add about your sexcapades with Vegeta, your little lovers’ promises?” _

_ I try to focus on him.  The serum must be wearing off again - I can feel the anger rising to the surface once more.  I manage not to answer him. _

_ “I really am quite surprised he had it in him to pull off such an act!  I never imagined such a dull and bad tempered model to possess enough charm to get anyone into bed, let alone someone halfway-smart like you.  It seems he went quite above and beyond the call of duty. Though perhaps it was only opportunism.” _

_ Was that it?  Was that why Vegeta had… Mere opportunism?  Like some stray dog, taking what he can get when it comes his way? _

_ “Miss Briefs, are you sure that is all you recall of your conversation with the telepath?  Or anything else you may have talked to on your way here or since you arrived?” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still haven't finished the last chapter, so... I hope to have it in the next couple of days? Don't hit me! It might have to be a few days after Christmas, sorry!!!!!!!!


	15. Weapons Research Unit - 2144

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is coming out hot, unedited, refined or beta-ed. Prepare for typos. Or wait a few few days for it to be updated.

**CHAPTER FIFTEEN: WEAPONS RESEARCH UNIT 2144**

 

I had wondered what the Weapons Research Unit looked like, and I still didn’t know.  A black bag was stuffed over my head and I was lead by my restraints from the jetcopter to a waiting cart, then for some distance before being disembarked and walked down, out of the heat of the sun into the cool of the earth, down echoing concrete corridors.  Finally, before the rubber-coated bars of my cell, the bag was removed and I was shoved inside. Two grim-faced older women with grips of steel forcibly undressed me and then I was left naked with a pair of day glo orange coveralls to don.

The light came from narrow slits of smoked glass at the top of the cell wall opposite the door.  There was nothing in the cell besides a metal bench seat with a thin, vinyl covered mat, a metal toilet with no seat, and the walls, painted gloss gray.  I was not sure what emotion would take control first - fear or despair.

“Hello?” I ventured.  I had glimpsed at least two other cells on either side of this one before they have put me inside.  But there was no answer. The others were not with me.

Hours passed and I was brought water and crackers.  I managed to eat most of them, choking the dry crumbs down my throat with sips of water.  The light outside faded and I lay on the hard mat, shivering, with nothing to do but think, and no sleep forthcoming.

I wondered what my parents would think if I went missing and never came back.  Would they ever think to look for me here, probably not more than a few hundred yards from where my father used to work?  It occurred to me he might spent time in these cells himself. When I had implicated him in my abduction of Vegeta Tarble Two, he had spent two weeks in custody at the WRU.  The letter of recommendation I had falsified and sent from his account appeared to make him part of the plot to extract the Saiyan. I had felt bad for it at the time, but now I reassessed.  If he had been sitting here for weeks wondering if he was going to be executed for treason, I had given him very little sympathy for his troubles.

I had managed to have him released, though.  On the advice of my lawyer (court appointed, as the private lawyers my mother approached seemed mysteriously unwilling to take the case) I could not possibly escape the charge of abduction, and I should plea on that count, and if I was going to prison for at least that, I may as well put my hand up for the lesser charge of fraudulent use of official correspondence.  Once my confession was signed he had been released with an apology, but he had never worked there again. And he and I had never been the same again. The trust was broken on all sides.

I had once asked him, once the trial was underway, and things were still very frosty between us, how he could have possibly borne to work for an organization that stole the entire lives of children from birth to grave.  He had thought about it for a long time and said, “Sometimes you don’t know what you’re getting into until it’s too late to get back out. I won’t compare my situation to the Saiyans’, but I’m not nearly as free as you might think.”

I was in the WRU base.  I wondered if Vegeta Black was here, too, or if Special Reconnaissance was housed elsewhere.  Maybe Vegeta Tarble Two was here somewhere? If he was alive. I could not think of any reason I would be allowed to ever leave this place alive, and so death was coming for me, sooner or later.  In that grim light, all my optimistic hopes fell apart, and I saw them as bright indulgences for a woman who had lived free, like silk scarves, good for nothing but making me feel better about myself.  Bardock was, I was now 100% sure, dead, either instantly or shortly after I saw him shot down. Gine would not have been kept alive indefinitely after she was captured, either. She was only a normal human nurse, and one that knew too much.  Goku, I had to face it… Goku was almost certainly dead, too. Why would they bother to keep a half-Saiyan with just enough buzz to accidentally stop his grandfather’s heart when they had a production line that could turn out monsters like Vegeta Black?

 Down here, I may as well be on the moon.  I tried yelling, I tried screaming, but there was only me to hear.

In the morning a short, expressionless young woman brought me another two dry crackers and more water.  She ignored all my questions, acting as if I wasn’t even there. I ate the crackers quickly, hunger beginning to reassert itself, seeing as the expected death hadn’t yet arrived.  Almost as soon as I was done, armed soldiers arrived at my cell with one of the terrifying female guards, and another bag was thrown over my head.

I was led out, through turns, down ramps, up again, but never leaving the echoing corridors.  When my hood was removed, I was in another stark room, with walls and floor of polished concrete.  Two men stood before me. One was quite short and a little squat, with a florid complexion, a neural net, and an open display.  The other was Zarbon, and it was the first time I had seen him this close. 

He was beautiful, tanned now, not pale, perfectly groomed despite his unnaturally green hair, and his eyes are luminous hazel gold.  He barely looked older than the day he held a gun to Tarble Two’s head in Quebec, though maybe a little thicker through the chest.

“What did you do with Tarble Two?” I asked.

“And here I thought  _ I  _ was conducting the interrogation,” Zarbon said.  He took a seat behind the large desk, and the younger man sat at the end.  I took the last chair; an unpadded metal thing, my knees almost collapsing as I sat.  I was trembling, very visibly I suspect. Every interrogation and torture scene I had ever seen in a movie flitted through my mind.  I saw no instruments of torture, but the drain hole in the floor is not reassuring.

“Now, let us begin, shall we?” said Zarbon, as if he didn’t know I was practically fainting with fear.

“I don’t know what you think you’re going to learn from me,” I told him  “I’m sure you’ve already gotten a full and detailed report from... _ Vegeta _ .  And I know no any more than he does.”

“We’ll see.  But there are things I get get from you that I might not so easily get from him.  And I’m after a full personal history from you. It’s worth going digging if you happen to be in a goldmine.  Who knows what you’ll uncover? Now, Corporal Cui, make Miss Briefs more comfortable. She looks nervous. Something to break the ice and get her tongue moving.”

I was given a glass of water, and while I was still sipping it, a swiftly administered syringe.  The effect was almost immediate - a fizzing in my veins, shooting around my body, then spreading warmth and lassitude.  I put the glass down, blinking as the room wavered. I did feel better, though.

“I want to start with Vegeta,” Zarbon said as I lost my sense of place and time.  I could still see the room, but I felt like I was poolside, on a sunlounger. A voice floated into my mind - my friend.  

"Tell us all about your association."

"You mean, how did I meet him?"

"That and everything after.  Start at the beginning, Miss Briefs.  Leave nothing out."

I grinned.  There was nothing I wanted to do more than talk all about him.

...

_ “That’s enough,” snaps Zarbon.  “Though I appreciate you waxing lyrical about my appearance, I have no need of a recap of the last two days in this room.” _

_ Cui looks at me in more annoyance.  He didn’t appreciate my description of him.  Had it been two days? I would take their word for it.  I had come unstuck from time lately. _

I shake my head.  “What should I talk about, then?” I ask.

“There is nothing more I need from you,” he tells me.  “Cui, call her guards to hose her down and take her back to her cell.”

...

I am crying on my bench, still coming back to myself after the serum.  I am no more use, not even to Zarbon. I have given up practically every secret I held.  I can’t decide if I wished I had more to tell, so I could keep spilling them and live longer, or if I just wanted death to come as soon as possible before I betrayed anyone else.

“Knock it off!” someone yells.

I was startled back into silence.  That wasn’t one of the guards. It sounded more like-

“Launch?  It’s me, Bulma!”

“I know it’s you!  You’ve been crying for hours, and before that you were talking in your sleep about  _ Vegeta! _ ”  She says this so venomously that I start crying all over again.

“I’m sorry, Launch-”

“Sorry doesn’t get us out of here!” she yells back.  “We’re here because of you, you dumb bitch! Because you can’t tell the difference between a nice ass and an assassin!”

“How was I supposed to know?  Tarble Two and Black look the same!”

“ _ They look the same! _ ” she mocked me.  “Do you think I couldn’t tell the difference between my Raddy and some fucking knuckle dragger Raditz like the one from Black Squad?  Do you think I’d hop into bed with him and be all ‘Fuck me hard, husband!’?”

“That’s not fair!”

“I don’t care about fair!” she screamed, and I realized that was the point. She wanted someone to scream at, and I was a culpable target.  “My husband is probably already dead because of you and that snake Vegeta Black! They’re probably hunting down everyone I’ve ever know right now, thanks to you!  So fuck you both!”

It was her turn to cry, and the sound of it sank into my chest, like little iron claws of regret and self-recrimination shredding my heart.  Her pain was mine, too.

Some time later, when she had cried herself out I asked, “Did you tell them where the evacuees were headed?”

“Are you kidding me?” she hissed down the corridor.  “Why would I talk to you about that? So that they can record our conversation and use it against me in interrogation?”

“Do you think that’s why they’ve put us together now?  So we might reveal more by talking to each other?”

“Probably.  They told me they were done with me yesterday.”

I want to talk to her about Chichi and Hasky, but I can’t bear to.  I have revealed their secrets.

“Did they use the serum on you?” I asked.

“Yes,” was the dull reply.  And then more tears. I wasn’t the only one feeling guilty.

That evening, one of the two women that brought the food came again.  I ignore her now, as she had ignored me and all my questions on all her previous visits, but this time I catch a whiff some some food substance so rich after days of crackers and porridge that I almost gagged.  I look over at where she is putting the food on the tray below the slot on the bars, and see a foil wrapped burger, like one you might find in a stand at a stadium. I leap to my feet and rush to the burger, afraid it might be a tease, but the woman doesn’t snatch it away.  Instead she slowly raises a cardboard cup to place it next to the burger. It is orange juice.

“Are you Bulma?” she asks quietly, not raising her head.

My hands were already snatching both burger and juice, but I almost forget entirely about them at this question.  What does she mean by it? I take in her appearance properly for the first time. She’s short - even shorter than me - and the olive fatigues on her look almost like cute kids’ versions.  Her skin is pale, and her head shaved under her cap. I ducked down to see her face under the brim of the cap. Her eyes are pale gray and her eyelashes white-blonde and barely existent. 

“Yes,” I say.

She inserts a gray blanket through the food tray, then turns away without saying anything else, moving her trolley down the corridor to serve Launch her food.  I watch her go until she is out of sight, one wheel of the trolley squeaking as it rolls away. She was too short to be an ordinary enlisted soldier, so what was she doing here serving meals in the WRU?  Was she a mutant? With that appearance, she was definitely not Saiyan, not even a little bit.

The next morning Launch had calmed a little, enough for us to be able to talk without screaming at each other.

“How could you not work it out?” she asks me.

I had asked myself the same question over and over.  But I still opened my mouth in defense. “Tarble Two was only fourteen when I knew him, and only for a week.  I didn’t know what he would be like, grown. And anything that seemed a little odd about his story, Black had an explanation for.  When did Pelham work it out?”

“I think he had suspicions all along,” she says.  “But he didn’t know for sure. He  _ wanted  _ to be wrong, which is why he volunteered to take you out to the island.  Aaliyah wouldn’t take any risks with Vegeta, she wanted him off the boat.  I thought she was being paranoid. I guess she called it. Well done, her.”

Our breakfast was better that morning, too.  Porridge with banana and honey slices instead of plain, with coffee.  

When the small girl came to deliver our lunch I met her at the meal slot.

“Why did you ask my name?” I whispered.  She kept her head down, and I almost missed the word when it came.

“ _ Quiet! _ ”

It gave me quite a lot to think about as I ate the reubens sandwich she brought.  

But the hope stoked by this behavior is by dashed mid afternoon.  The sound of booted feet echoing down the hall heralds the sight of Zarbon before the bars of my cell.

He passes paper and a pen through the bars.

“My last will and testament?” I guess.  I suddenly saw the improved food in a different light.

He smiled, evidently amused by me joking about my own demise.  “Not quite. I want you to write two letters, one to Cornell University and one to your parents, explaining that you have dropped out of the Masters program and have gone to join your sister in Bolivia.”

I feel the blood drain from my face.  First, because I know that these would just be letters to throw my parents and maybe the police off the trail of my disappearance while I took an unmarked grave out the back of the base.  And second because he mentioned my sister. I did not want them to be thinking or even knowing about Tights.

“Pen and paper?” I say.  “Seriously, who does that any more?”

“We thought it would add a personal touch,” Major Zarbon tells me.  “Your handwriting may be recognised.”

“My handwriting won’t be deciphered,” I correct him shakily.  “I don’t think I’ve written more than a few sentences on paper in years.”

“Humor us.”

“I don’t think I shall.”

“Fine.  We’ll compose and send an email for you from your address.  Also, you might want to consider the kind treatment you’ve been getting.  It can always be revoked.”

_ Kind? _

He holds out his hand for the paper and pen.  I don’t give it back.

“The guards will only take it from you later if you don’t hand it over.”

“I’ve changed my mind.  I think I will write a letter.”   _ It just might not be a letter you like. _

“Don’t I get to write a letter?” Launch asks from next door.

“Only if you can give us an address to mail it to,” Zarbon replies, stepping back and looking into her cell.  “No?”

“Go sit on a five foot pole.”

“Charming.”

...

When the girl comes back with dinner I am ready.  I jump to the slot to take the bowl of chili and nachos from her and press a tiny, balled up piece of paper into her hand as I do.  Her head snaps up, but she says nothing.

“Thank you,” I say, taking the bowl.

I am in a state of agitation through the evening and morning of the next day.  I don’t know how my note will go down, or even if it would be read. Before lunch, Zarbon paid another visit.  I stared at him on the verge of panic, expecting that the note had been turned into him.

“I’ve come to pick up your finished letters,” he says.

“I haven’t written them yet.”

“Been too busy?”

“It’s been hard to find the right words.”

“Would you like a script to follow?”

“No, I think it will be more authentic in my own words.”

He gives me a sly look, and I think he knows I’m not being honest.  But hopefully he just thinks I am stalling for time. I am.

“Don’t think too long.  Those emails will go out eventually.”

When the girl comes with lunch she keeps her head down again.  I hope for a note to be pressed into my hand, but there is nothing.  I can barely eat the cob salad, I am so disappointed. It’s only when I finish the paper cup of grape juice that I find it wedged into the cavity under the base of the cup.  Swiftly I palm the note.

I have already looked for evidence of cameras in my cell and from the corridor, and could not find any, though I’m sure they must be there.  I take the note and retreat to the bench, roll myself in the blanket facing the wall. Then I open the note, using the edge of the blanket to hopefully hide it from any surveillance.  It is hard to read it in the small amount of light that makes it into my cell and behind the blanket, but I manage.

_ Some friends of mine want to get you out of here.  They are working on it. _

I read it over and over, my heart hammering.  It was too good to be true, and I was resisting it, yet how could I not believe it when it was my only chance of rescue?  I have no way to talk about it with Launch, either, even though she is in the next cell.

I tear off another scrap of paper from the few I had been given and wrote, pressing against the wall:

_ How?  And can you tell Launch next door, too?  If I’m getting out of here, she needs to come, too! _

The reply takes a whole day to arrive.

The girl met my eye for a second as she hands the cup of juice and the macaroni cheese over.  My fingers feel for the scrap of paper under the cup, and find something else, too. The girl then moves to give Launch her meal, and I take mine to the bench to read it.  A small capsule pill falls out from behind the note. This note has different handwriting.

_ When Gure comes back to serve you dinner, take this pill immediately.  If all goes well, I will see you soon after that. _

Who was this person?  Who would I see? What was going to happen?  Vegeta? Vegeta Black? Was it possible that he might regret what he'd done, that every word and action towards me might not have been a lie, enough that he would try and save me?  But if it was him, why didn't he say so?

My heart is beating out of my chest with fear and hope.  “Launch?” I say, scared she might not have found her note, or might not have gotten one.

“Bulma,” she whispers in a warning tone.  “This could be another trap.”

“I know.  But you realize, it's our last chance?”

No answer.

It takes me hours to eat my macaroni, bite by tiny bite, forcing my tight stomach to take it.  At last I hear footsteps in the corridor, and I swallow the pill with the last gulp of juice. And only after that do I notice that it is more than one pair of footsteps.

Into my field of vision walks Zarbon, and inside I wail with dismay.  He has with him the smirking Cui.

“Did you finish those letters, Bulma?” Zarbon asks.

“No.  It’s been hard to find the time.”  I hope this is all he wants.

He barely flickers a brow at my sass.  “Well, that was your last chance. The emails will be sent.  Cui, unlock the door.”

My stomach drops, and I start trembling uncontrollably.

“Bulma!” says Launch from next door.  She too knows that this is likely my final journey.  “I'm sorry for what I said. You're not a dumb bitch!”

I think about answering, but my knees give way instead.  A weak, “No!” is all I manage as Cui comes behind me and slaps cuffs on me again, hands chained behind my back.  He hauls me to my feet by pulling on my upper arms from behind, and I am sure he is deliberately trying to dislocate my shoulders.

They march me down the corridor, and this time there is no bag over my head.  I am sure this is a bad sign. We take a different turn than usual, and then Cui is forcing my up some stairs.  What are we returning to the surface for? My execution?

“Where are you taking me?” I croak.

"Just a few more things we want to question you about,” says Zarbon from ahead.

The ground floor corridor has polished concrete floors and white painted walls, not quite as grim as downstairs, but not exactly cosy.  I am marched through some heavy doors and then turned to face a wooden door flanked by two fully grown Nappas with machine guns, who salute the major.  Zarbon enters first, and I see a glimpse of office - deep red carpet, display, wooden furniture - before my eyes lock on the thing waiting in a nicely upholstered chair.

It is Vegeta Black.  And I know it is him, because as he looks from Zarbon to me I see his expression snap from petulence to shock.  Apparently he wasn’t expecting me, either. I have no idea what my face was doing. I am too deep in fear for rage or pain to register.

Cui presses me into another chair, hard and metal, and Vegeta sits upright in his, dropping the casual pose he’d been affecting when we walked in.

“What is  _ she  _ doing here, Major?” he asked.

“Oh, I thought that while I had you in my office, I’d go other a few things with her while we still have her.”

I start to feel faint, and hate Zarbon even more, as he is smiling at Vegeta, teasing him.

“I’ve already told you everything,” I whisper, so faintly I’m not sure Zarbon will hear, but he answers me.

“Just a few more things.  I thought I’d try a different method of interrogation, this time.”

Cui unlocks my manacles, but is just as quickly binding one of my wrists to the arm of the chair I sit in with tape.  I struggle, my eyes finding Vegeta’s on the other side of the room, but he has a thousand mile stare going on, looking through me like someone watching a storm approaching on the horizon.

“Are you quite managing, Lieutenant?” Zarbon says, taking my other arm and pinning it down while Cui finishes taping the other.  When both are bound, Zarbon turns to the table and takes up a black, plastic box, about the size of a small shoe box, and opens the front up like a clapper board.  There is a hole in one end, and he pushes it over my left hand, then closes the front, locking the thing on my wrist. Inside is some slippery fabric that constricts to hug my hand tightly.

“What is this?” I ask.

Vegeta leans forwards and puts his chin in his hands, resting his elbows on his knees.  “This is pointless,” he says. “She was with me practically every second we were in The Bronx, besides the few minutes during the skirmish with Black Squad.  She doesn’t know anything more than I already told you.”

“It will give me peace of mind,” Zarbon says.  And then checking the fit of the box, he sat down at the desk.  “Now, this is your last chance, Bulma. Where is that Wilderscum flotilla off to?”

Taped to the chair, I can’t even see him now.  My chair is facing more or less towards Vegeta’s.

“I don’t know.”

With no warning, pain lances through my hand to my wrist.  I scream through my teeth, jaw clamping down on the pain. It feels like burning acid on my skin.  And then it was gone, leaving me panting.

“You mean to tell me you never picked up any hint of their destination?”

“No.”

The pain strikes again, for longer this time, and it creeps up past my wrist.  It’s going on long enough that I do scream, but I run out of air before the pain ends.

“Oh, god!”

I double over as much as I can in the chair, and the pain ends again, leaving me heaving in breaths.  Sweat is standing out over my entire body. Worst of all, I have no idea what is going on inside the box.  I fear for my hand.

“I find it hard to believe that when you were on board you didn’t overhear a single one of those simpletons mention where they were going.”

I raise my head again, my eyes meeting Vegeta’s.  He sits rigidly, his face set. I cannot decipher his expression, but it holds none of the sympathy I want to see there.  A sob goes through me, and I’m ashamed to say, I am wracking my brain for any fragment of memory that Zarbon might find useful.  The pain is like nothing I’ve felt before, and I’m shaking in anticipation of another dose.

“I’m sorry - they didn’t seem to know-”

This time the pain turns on, and Zarbon lets it go and go, burning up my arm like hot needles and sulphuric acid.  The pain is so all consuming, I can’t see, and I scream, rocking back in the chair, trying to instinctively pull away from the source, terrified that if the pain reaches my heart, I will die.  I scream over and over until I lose my breath and breathe in whooping pants, but it’s like the scream carries on. There is a noise coming from outside my body.. A siren, muffled by the door.

There is a frantic knocking.  The pain shuts off.

“What is it?” Zarbon shouts, getting up from the desk.  My eyes go to Vegeta again, accusatory, and his slide away from me.  I remember that I hate him, and all this I am experiencing is his fault.

Cui opens the door, just in time for the knocking Nappa to fall through it and land unconscious on the carpet.

“Fuck!”

The siren is interrupted.  “Gas attack!” says a stern pre-recorded voice.  Zarbon doesn’t even look back, but runs into the corridor.  Cui is out the door in a flash, and Vegeta is on his heels. But instead of going out the door, he slams it shut.  My fear about the gas attack slams right into fear of him as he rounds on me. I cower, for an instant thinking he means to finish me off and silence me, but instead he opens the box and removes it.

“Hold your breath!” he barks at me, and I do, though my heart is determined to use up all the oxygen in my system, racing away.  I remember the rescue attempt that was scheduled. Is this part of it? Is he part of it after all? 

He tears the tape - it hurts, but it’s nothing to what I have just endured.  Then he grabs my wrist and pulls me out into the corridor. We run down the hall, heading for a closet that is standing open, what looks like fire-fighting equipment, hazard suits and gas masks inside.  He takes a mask down and shoves it over my head, none too gently, then hurries to don his own while I try to get mine in position. I can’t hold my breath any longer, and start to suck in tiny breaths. As soon as Vegeta has his mask on he adjusts mine.  The mask makes him look scary, with its black rubber, glass eye holes and dangling respirator. He looks up and down the corridor, but it’s deserted aside from the bodies and the Nappas. In the other direction fire escape doors swing freely. He tows me after him toward them, slowing before we get to them, then creeping up to the opening.  The siren is so loud outside, the two figures standing with their backs to us couldn’t possibly hear us approach. Zarbon and Cui have masks on, too, and are looking out on a wide area surrounded on three sides by the wings of a building, hazed with uneven pale smoke. Across the huge quadrangle, half a dozen figures lay still. 

Vegeta drops my wrist, giving me a look I suppose is meant to be meaningful, and then charges Zarbon, leaping onto the taller man’s back and simultaneously electrocuting Cui.  Cui goes down, while Vegeta is ripping the mask off Zarbon from behind. The man spasms, and I guess that Vegeta was pumping him full of as such charge as he can. I knew from the encounter at Lac Brule it wouldn’t kill him, but it could sure slow him down.  

It takes a few moments, but the combined effects of gas and electricity has him face down without ever seeing who assailed him.  Vegeta then relieves both men of their sidearms.

“Come on, we need to find a way out of here while we have the chance!” Vegeta shouts through the mask.  

The sirens shut off.  We run through the quadrangle and round the corner of one wing and skid to a halt.  Ahead is a clear line to a massive perimeter wall, six yards high at least and made of concrete topped with gun turrets, with metal blast doors for gates.  

A open top buggy in drab olive gray is rocketing towards us.  Then the driver pulls it into a sharp U turn, kicking up dust as he wheels it to face the other way.  Vegeta pushes me back against the corner, peering around it, but then I see two familiar figures dash out of the cover of the doorway.

“It’s them!” I cry.  “It’s Launch and the girl who serves us meals!  Come on!”

He looks back at me, hesitates, then edges out.  The girls are jumping into the waiting back of the buggy, exchanging words with the two in the front.  As we head towards them, one of the men jumps out of the front and starts running towards us. I stop in confusion, though I shouldn't be confused.  It is another Vegeta. 

“Bulma!” he yells.  

“Fuck,” says the one at my side.  

I throw my confusion aside and keep going, blinking when this new Vegeta takes my hand and ushers me into the back seat next to Launch, with the short girl on the other side.  I look back, realizing there is no room in the buggy for the first Vegeta, but as we start moving he takes a running jump and lands on the tail, gripping the roll bars to hold on.  As we start speeding out into the open space I see more of the compound we are in. There are fake grass tennis courts, gymnasiums, apartment blocks and parade grounds stretching on for half a mile at least into the mist that hangs about the place.  It is decorated with fallen bodies, but there are still some standing, wearing gas masks like Vegeta and I. I wonder how the others are immune to the gas, as they aren’t wearing masks, but now is not the time to ask. The fast moving buggy is attracting attention, and some of those figures start to run towards us.  Some of those figures, like the ones outside the gate, have guns.

“Those auto sentries are going to riddle us with holes!” Vegeta yells from behind me.  I look back and I see he has one of the guns in his free hand.

“No they won’t!” says the driver.  His voice is instantly familiar, but I keep looking back and out to the place we are leaving.  “I disabled them. It will take at least fifteen minutes for the program to reboot!”

“Who is this guy?” yells the girl, Gure, pointing at Vegeta.  “He’s not part of the plan!”

“It’s Vegeta Black,” I say, looking back at him with surprise.   How is he  _ not  _ part of the plan?

She gets no further answer, as someone starts firing at us from in front.  We all flinch and cower in our seats, except for Vegeta, stuck standing like a sitting duck at the back.  Instead he levels the gun and starts shooting back. The other Vegeta then eases himself up to the edge of the passenger door and aims his own gun, firing.  There’s someone else begins firing from the rear.

“Gimme that other gun!” Launch shouts, reaching up towards the gun tucked in Vegeta’s waistband.  He hands her his one instead and pulls the second gun himself, firing back at whoever is pursuing us in tandem with Launch.

I am just about screaming with tension, and turn back to see a soldier fall to a shot from the other Vegeta.  The gate looms, but it is already opening. The buggy slows as it approaches in order not to hit the slabs of metal as they swing out, and I hear a yell from behind us.  I turn that way, and Launch fires, the last soldier going down. Then without missing a beat, she raises the gun and fires into Vegeta’s chest.

Time stops for a moment of frozen horror, and then Vegeta falls from the back of the buggy, trailed by a spray of blood.  He hits the dirt and we zoom away from him.

“NO!” I scream, not believing what I’ve just seen.  I rip the gas mask up and off, but I still see the same sight.  “Launch! What did you do?”

“Cleaned up,” she snarls back.  I look at her, realizing that she did it  _ on purpose _ .  We are through the gates and they are swinging shut behind us, and I turn to the two in the front.  

“We have to go back!” I yell.  “We lost Vegeta!”

“We can’t go back!” says the driver.

“Yes, you can!”  But the gate is already shutting on Vegeta’s prone body.

“I’m sorry, Honey, but we can’t!”

I round on Launch, shoving her away from myself into the other girl, horrified to be touching something so hateful.  “Why did you do that?” I screamed.

“Don’t be a fucking fool!” she yells back at me.  “I stopped you from making the same mistake all over again!  He wasn’t part of the plan! That bastard just decided to tag along, probably because he saw a way to finish the mission he failed last time!”

“No!” I say, even though doubt touches me.  I hate her in that second, and though I have never struck someone in anger in my life, I kneel to slap her across the face, as hard as I can manage.  She tumbles against the seat, then rears back up, still holding the gun, her eyes wild. For a moment I think she might shoot me or pistol whip me, but instead she tosses the weapon like she’s forgotten what it is, pulls back and punches me right in the face.

“Hey!” shouts the Vegeta in the front, and the vehicle swerves.  I am knocked back, half out of the buggy by a blow that while not as painful as the torture device in Zarbon’s office, does not recede much.

“We’re not going back for that traitor just so he can betray us twice!” she screams.  “My husband is dead because of him! I hope I killed him!”

“Launch!” Gure protests, upset, though not as upset as me.  “Sit down!”

I cry.  I can’t think of anything more to do but cry.  I’m not sure if Launch is right or not, but I hate her, I hate her, and I want her to be wrong, but if she is...then a good man is bleeding out in the dust behind us.

“No!  No!”

When Launches thigh touches mine, I shove her again, and she shoves back.

“What the devil is going on back there?” the driver yells, but we are brawling now, fists and nails flying.  I am beyond fury. She may even be right, but she had taken for herself the role of judge, jury and executioner, and performed them all in a matter of seconds.

The buggy stops and Launch is hauled off me.  I must be bruised and bloody, but I can’t feel anything but rage.  I jump up and out the side of the buggy, and start back towards the compound, now a couple of miles away.

“Bulma!” the other Vegeta calls.  “It’s too late!” Someone runs after me, and takes me by the shoulders, turning me.  I let them. I know it’s too late. And I know my heart is shattered and broken.

“Bulma,” he says, but it is not Vegeta.  It’s the driver, his voice the same warm, caring one that had comforted me after nightmares.  I blink the tears away and look up into the face of my father.

“What?”

He gathers me in for a hug, and I am too stunned to resist.

“I’m sorry for what just happened,, but we’ve got to go.  You mother is waiting for us in the preserve out East, and if we stay here much longer, they will catch us.  Can you get in the car, Honey?”

I nod, and he leads me back to the buggy, putting me in the front seat.  Vegeta is in the back, practically sitting on top of Launch, Gure crammed into the corner.

“We’re ready, Doc,” he says.

My Dad moves off, driving the buggy off the road and into the scrub.  I stare at him. I never knew he could drive. For a little while I’m not sure I’m not dreaming.

“Dad, what are you doing here?”

He spares me a momentary glance before concentrating on the way ahead again.

“Vegeta here heard a rumour you were in the detention centre under the Special Rec. office, and told me straight away.  Gure confirmed it for us. Then we just needed to come up with an escape plan before it was too late.”

“But… ”  I looked at the Vegeta.  He stared right back at me, a hopeful smile tugging at his mouth.  He was a little younger than Black. A little lighter built.

“Remember me?”

“Oh, god damn,” I whisper.  “Tarble Two.”

He smiles, but all I can feel is the hole where joy should be.  This is all ruined for me now. I cannot go back in time and feel that joy that Vegeta Black stole in this Vegeta’s place!  Instead I cry.

The thoughts inside me pile up into a wall of solid black, with no discernable beginnings and ends, only the despair they bring with them.  I zone out for a while, staring out at passing cactus and shrubs without seeing.

When I do start to tune back in, the others are talking.

“How did you do it then?” Launch asked.  “That gas attack was you, right?”

“Yes, one of the weapons I developed myself - which was how I had access.  Timed release capsules that are so small you would mistake one for a pill until it burst open.  Gure, Vegeta and I dropped them all over the compound while we walked over the last day, and set them to go off this evening.”

“What were the little pills you gave us?”

“The antidote.  So you wouldn’t be affected.  Very handy weapon - you can subdue a large group and walk among them while they’re falling unconscious.”

“So, they’re  _ not  _ dead?”

“No!  Good heavens!  I’m not that sort of monster!”

I frown.  My father’s story makes no sense to me.  I stare at his mustachioed profile.

“Dad, how were you able to get inside the Weapons Research Unit?  You haven’t worked there for years.”

He hesitates, cringing slightly.  “Well. That’s not actually true. I never stopped.  They wouldn’t let me.”

“Then why did you tell me you did stop working there?”

“Your mother and I decided, given what happened, we didn’t think you’d understand that...I had no option but to keep working there.”

More lies!  I didn’t know how I could still be surprised.  “What do you mean you have no option?”

“I mean, dear, that once you are an asset to Weapons Research and Special Rec, you don’t ever get to be not an asset again.”

“You mean...they’d kill you if you tried to leave?”

“I’m not reckless enough to test them, but perhaps.  They do not take resignations, nor retirements.”

“But Dad, you’re sixty nine!”

He flashes me a grin.  “They did let me reduce my hours.  If it were up to me, I’d have retired a while ago.  But then if I had I wouldn’t have met Vegeta Tarble Two, and I’d have been in no position to save you after this mess you got yourself into.  What the hell happened this time?”

My tears start to overflow again.  “Too much, Dad, way too much. I’m surprised you bothered to save me though.  You just bought yourself a death sentence.”

“Bulma!” he says, darting another look at me.  “How could I not? You’re my own daughter! I wasn’t going to sit back and let them torture and execute you!”

“But now you’re on the run!” I point out.  “You could have done that at any time - let the WRU and gone on the run, but you didn’t.”

“I couldn’t when they held my whole family over me.  They knew how to get you, your mother and your sister.  We would all have had to disappear at the same time, and things weren’t so bad that I wanted to tear you all away from your lives..”

“Tights!” I gasp.  “Where is she? Does she know?  They know she’s in Bolivia!”

“She knows.  And by now she should be out of Bolivia again.”

“And what about Mom?”  I tried to imagine her as a fugitive, her lovely house and furnishings, her life of afternoon tea parties and grooming her beloved horse gone.  Dad looked pained.

“She understands.  But it’s going to be a hard adjustment for her.”

I wondered who it wasn’t going to be a hard adjustment for, and looked in the backseat.  Gure and Vegeta - correction, Tarble Two - were looking around them with interest. Launch was slumped in the corner, and she looked away as my eyes landed on her.  Tarble caught my eye, another smile leaping to his face, though he tries to suppress it. I can’t look at him, not when his face is  _ his _ .

I turn to face the front and fall apart again.

...

It is nearly dark when Dad guides the buggy onto a dirt road in the middle of nowhere.  We roll along for a while until the shape of a large vehicle looms on the side of the road.  A motorhome. The lights are out, but the door opens anyway.

“Trunks?”

My mother rushes us both as we get out, grappling us both in a teary hug of released anxiety.

“Oh, Bulma!  Oh, Trunks!”

She kisses us both.

“Come one, lets get inside, Panchy.  We need to hit the road. Are you okay to drive?”

She nods.  “I’ve been practicing.”

“Good girl.”

The six of us board the thing through the side door.  It’s so normal looking - not the getaway vehicle I imagined.

“I didn’t know you had a motorhome,” I say.

“We didn’t until yesterday,” my mom says, then she hugs be again, blocking the traffic of bodies from the door to the seating area at the back.  “Oh, Bulma! How do you get yourself into these things?”

“Trouble came looking for me, this time.”

“Come on, Panchy,” my father says, hurrying her on.  “Time for reunions later.”

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“For now, Arizona.  After that...who knows?”

They go up front, and the four of us go into the back and collapse on the bench seats of the lounge area, dropping the blinds.  Launch puts herself in the corner and curls up, hiding her face as she starts sobbing. I can’t look at her, and I can’t look at Tarble, either, so I look at Gure.  She looks kind of scared, but stoic about it.

“How did you get wrapped up in this?” I asked her.

“I met Vegeta when I worked in the cell complex he was housed in.”

I force myself to look at him.  “They put you in a cell?’

“They never offered me the choice of becoming a soldier,” he explains.  “They put me straight in the research lab. Trained me like a soldier, to an extent, but only so that they could use me as a lab rat.”

“Oh, god!”

“And that’s how I met your dad.  Not long after I got to the WRU in fact.”

“My dad performed  _ experiments  _ on you?”

“That makes it sound really bad.  It was okay. He made sure I stayed safe and was taken care of.”

I closed my eyes.  All these years of worrying about Vegeta and he had been right there under my father’s nose, and he hadn’t told me because… Because I would want to save him.  And my father had not been willing to give everything up for Vegeta. Only for me.

“I’ve lived nearly my whole life on the WRU base,” said Gure softly.

“Did they pick you up at birth?”

She nodded.

“Why?”

“Because I can do this.”

At first I think nothing is happening, but then I notice her face getting darker, tanning before my eyes, until it matches the colour of the wood panelling.  Next, lines and swirls of darker detail bloom to the surface of her skin. I stare. In less than a minute her skin is doing a passable imitation of the motorhome interior. 

“That’s...amazing.  They didn’t train you as a soldier, either, though?”

She raises her eyebrow at me, though it looks like wood grain melting.  “I’m not exactly an asset on a battlefield. They studied me, but I’m no super soldier like a Saiyan or a Dorf.”

“A what?  What’s a Dorf?”

“One of what Zarbon is.”

...

At some point we are in Arizona, and my Dad comes back out to show us how to convert the dining and lounge areas into double beds, and the double berth above the cab.  There is an awkward moment when we try to decide who will sleep where. Launch took one half of the lounge bed as soon as it was laid out, and the four of us squeezed in the narrow kitchen/bathroom corridor.

“Well, obviously Bulma shouldn’t share with Launch, so why don’t you take the lounge, Gure?” says Tarble.

“Or you could take the lounge, and I’ll sleep in this bed with Bulma,” Gure suggests.

“I think I’m going to go up front and take over from Mom for a while,” I announce.  “You guys sort it out.”

I step into the cab and draw the curtain behind me.  I want to be alone. Even back in the cell at the WRU would do.  But instead I have my mom. She reaches out and strokes my hair. The truck starts to veer off the road.

“Mom!”

“Oh!”

She corrects.  “Your father has disabled the GPS on this thing so it can’t be tracked that way.  But it also means we have to  _ actually  _ drive it!  What a bore!”

“Do you want me to take over for a while?”

“You can drive, Bulma?”

“Yes.”  At least as well as she can.

“I’ll keep going a little while.  We’ll swap later. They will be plenty of driving to go around, I’m sure.”  Her chin wobbles a bit.

“I’m sorry about the house, and Crackers,” I say.

She waves a dismissive hand, though I can see unshed tears in her eyes by the light of the dashboard.  “Crackers is staying at the neighbor’s place now. He’ll be fine. But tell me, Bulma, what happened?”

“It’s a long story.  I don’t feel like I can...talk about it tonight.”

“Short version?”

I consider not answering her, but then I remember Fasha Black’s jeering, and the crushing humiliation that went with it.  

“I got played, Mom.  I got played real bad.”  I let my tears fall, and she leans over and squeezes my hand.  “Someone tricked me and...betrayed me.”

“Oh, baby!  I’m so sorry.  Was it a friend?”

“He was…”  But how to say?  What to say? The reality is shaming.  “I was…” I lose it, more tears turning into silent sobs, messy, wet crying doubling me over.

There is a pause.  “It was a man then?  Your lover?”

I nod.  “And now he’s dead.”

Her hand tightens around mine.

“Oh, Bulma, my love!”

 

End of Book One.

  
  
****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're not subscribed, please do as I may be pushing out a bonus chapter in a little while.


End file.
